The Phoenix Generation (25 page)
Read The Phoenix Generation Online
Authors: Henry Williamson
Another S.S. man stepped forward and took Göring’s
photograph
. Another came out with his camera. Göring turned, obligingly. Others left the ranks. He posed, or rather stood, for them like a film-star until someone with a hand-motion stopped it. Phillip had seen uniformed men taking snap-shots of Hitler in the Luitpoldfeld: all was informal and friendly, so different from the pre-war conception of German discipline.
Phillip grew more weary during the continual march-past of red banners, while Hitler stood in his car, arm out hour after hour, and leaving his seat wandered away to prowl about below. He noticed that many of the S.A. men had rows of ribbons: there
were ex-colonels, majors, even generals of the 1914–18 army as volunteers in the ranks. They seemed to have the spirit of English gentlemen who had transcended class-consciousness. There was no arrogance, but a tranquillity about them.
But when he came upon a smallish dapper man in g
reenish-grey
uniform, obviously regular army, eyeglass cutting a red rim in the socket of one eye, four rows of ribbons and a service cap upthrust in front, he wondered who he was, for he looked out of place. The face was somehow familiar: yes, it was General von Fritsch. What was he doing, as he stood before a row of private soldiers and speaking to one? Phillip moved closer. The General was rating, in cold-passionate tones, a private soldier standing to attention with eight others in front of a row of black
Mercédès-Benz
cars. Von Fritsch’s tone was not furious, but a sort of
cold-ash
fury was in a voice almost deadly quiet. Was this homosexual reaction to inhibited passion or lust? Piers had said that
homosexual
practices were rife in certain sections of the S.S.; but these were men of the new army. They were tall, like guardsmen,
red-faced
, but not de-humanised. When von Fritsch turned away they exchanged quiet, amused glances. He was the old, they were the new, Hitler-Army, with most of its officers from the middle and lower-middle classes given a new and earnest self-respect.
It seemed that the spirit of the elderly
Junker,
or squire, was entirely apart from the majority: an isolation of the old world within the new. After watching that perhaps not insignificant episode Phillip wandered away, while the incessant beat of the drums seemed more insistent, wearisome, de-human.
They passed: group after group, banner after banner, (he continued the letter to Melissa) Hitler standing in his car a few yards from where I had insinuated myself among his Schutz Staffel, his S.S. Black Guards, personal to the Führer: they let me through when I smiled at them. March, march, march, pom, pom, pom. It was one o’clock, we had been out nearly seven hours. The other two were wandering about. The sun was very hot. I knew from experience that impressions made when I was tired were biased, weighted by fatigue. People talk about thinking: when they mean cogitation, which perhaps is an attempt to ratify the feeling-records of the past in one’s brain. Just as most writers get their ideas and feelings from literature, so the minority of writers get them direct from life—their own lives. Their feelings and reactions are to them the truth. But when a writer is tired, or fearful, or
surcharged
with the moods and idées fixes of others, he may easily lose divination. How easy to write of soulless militarism and mechanisation
of the individual German here today, robots of a totalitarian state based on regulated welfare. These were disciplined—self-disciplined—individuals of a resurgent nation. I did not see one piece of paper thrown down anywhere. The streets, as well as the Luitpoldfeld were clean, when the hundreds of thousands had departed.
I have thought that Hitler might never have come to power had the radio not been invented. The Idea of renaissance brought a living personality to every man and girl and youth of this nation. The radio is sensitive to personality. Any pretentiousness, nervousness, insincerity, or fear is immediately magnified for the listener. Without radio Hitler would be dead by now, exhausted, burnt out, beating in vain against what Arnold Bennett called
le
bloc.
In the same way the wireless has done more than anything to bring to the British public the simple, sincere, and duty-exhausted King George V.
The dilemma of any resurgent industrial nation is that a high
standard
of living for all must be paid for by exports, to get currency to buy the necessary raw materials and food which the country cannot grow for all its people; or wither again to a lower condition than that from which it arose. But in Great Britain we have every raw material in the Empire, and hundreds of millions of many races all requiring our industrial products. Yet we are gummed up by a financial
idea
out of date since the beginning of the war in 1914. British influence, otherwise rule, extends to nearly a fifth of the surface of the earth. The new way has been shown by Birkin; but the old way clings to power.
Wandering about worried by his thoughts in spite of knowing that idealistic unselfishness often has its base in frustration, Phillip said to an S.S. man, one of thousands lining the street, not to prevent assassination but to keep free movement of both masses and vehicles,
“Aren’t you tired, standing here hour after hour?”
He replied, “We’ve been here since five this morning, but if our Leader who is older than us can stand there hour after hour for us, we can do the same for him.”
Phillip went back to the Diplomat’s train. There he found Piers asleep. He was returning to Berlin after dinner. The battery had not held its charge. Even averaging forty miles an hour for the journey it would take eight hours. When the two had gone—for Martin had his job in a bank—Phillip felt lonely. The masses and movements had exhausted his eye-nerves, he thought, accustomed to grass, trees, and the sameness of valley life. That afternoon he had bought a book with about two dozen caricatures of the Jew as financier, politician, rag-and-bone man, critic, etc. Phillip demurred when he was about to buy it, and when he did,
Martin said with a subdued look of reproach, “Don’t look at that, it is not very worthy.” Phillip, however, had kept it as a souvenir: the type of thing one could buy, but never think of buying, in the shops off the Leicester Square district of London.
He went out again and made friends with an S.A. man who spoke English. Like all others he had spoken to, this man was most friendly towards the English.
“Not because England is rich do we want to be friends. But because we are the same sort of people. That last war was a terrible mistake, but we feel we have learnt from it.”
“Will it happen again—for the same causes, fundamentally?”
“It cannot happen again. Every German knows war is hell, useless, destroying the best, leaving the worst to ferment destruction of the state.”
“Are you afraid of France attacking you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Will you ever be friends with Russia?”
Immediately the S.A. man assumed his Hitler-built
persona.
His eyes set, he clenched his hands, his voice was harsh. “Never again will Russia march into our Fatherland as in 1914, killing women and children and destroying our farms and our homes. One day Japan will strike with them in the East, and then, we shall strike the Jewish snake of Bolschewismus!”
This was depressing. He was a keen, dark young German from Franconia. He was reproducing gestures and speech which had entered into and made his thought in the past. He relaxed.
“Our Führer will never make war,” he said in his normal voice. “Would you ever make war? You, a front-line soldier?”
“I am afraid of the idealists and pacifists, both the older and the present generation who were children during the war. The older generation of pacifists would support a war against Germany, to compensate for their withdrawn attitude when they were of military age. The younger intellectuals in England now wear the clothes many of my generation discarded during the war and certainly afterwards. They would cause trouble and enmity but if they succeeded in helping a war-psychosis they would go to America or into some Ministry of Propaganda and kill Hitler at the microphone. True idealists are rare, they are the dedicated workers, who would if need be, die at the stake. You know, if I must be truthful, many true Communists are like that. And Jews are often very brave men. The best General on our side in the war was a civilian when war broke out and became a
Lieutenant-
General
, Sir John Monash, commanding the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. He was a military genius immediately recognised by Haig, who used his ideas to break your Siegfried Stellung.”
“Haig was a soldier! Our historians call him, ‘the Master of the Field’. Your Pacifists call him, what? The Butcher?”
“More or less that. But, you know, the war was bloody awful …”
“My friend! To Eternal Friendship between our Brother Countries! To the New Europe, which cannot endure without Germany and England and the Empire! Peace and the arts of constructive peace for a Millennium!”
“In the West Country, where I live, there is a saying, ‘If you want good neighbours, you must first be a good neighbour yourself.’”
“My friend, you have perceived the problem. Our foundation is built on rock, not sand. The Germans are very friendly to Englishmen, yes? Our newspapers do not distort news of England, and so the young Germany thinks happiness of his neighbour!”
I heard it gladly, hopefully, Melissa. I wish I had been able to believe it with, say, the idealism of cousin Willie, who did indeed lose his life for peace, even if few, if any except myself, saw it like that. His pathway led to death: keeping his word to Mrs. Ogilvie, and she failing to keep hers, was the direct cause of his body being taken from the sea, like Shelley’s upon the sands of Lerici.
Germany is boycotted. Germany will not break the idiom of money invested for the greatest profit, irrespective of human life. The free for all is dereliction and death for millions. Oh Christ if this boycott leads to war! There will not be a Jew left in Central Europe, there will not be a Germany, there will not be an Empire, England will no longer be Shakespeare’s “precious gem set in a silver sea, this realm, this England!” Yet Hitler is now within an economic trap, isolated in the centre of Europe, dying not from individual Shylocks, for the Jews are splendid family folks, and created one of the first corporate states in the known history of the world, but from an obsolescent system which no longer serves modern world-needs. War is war. I have seen German prisoners, surrendered during battle, bombed in communication trenches when led to the rear,
and
this by a Battalion of Foot Guards. ‘Truth is the first casualty in war.’ As for Birkin able to rouse our people in time, he is making no real headway. The sad truth is that the great masses of people never feel keenly about anything outside their home and jobs, and that is good. They’re usually too tired after the day’s work to want anything but food, social life and necessary beer in
their clubs (i.e. pubs). And the intellectual minority which formulates, indirectly, their destiny, is not prepared to struggle for peace. They are isolated souls, seldom prepared to be good neighbours first.
The next day I was invited to the Party headquarters hotel. I sat not far from Hitler in the drawing-room. He was talking to several people. Very quick head movements. His face, in happiness, has a luminous quality, his eyes particularly, being pale blue with a kind of inner shining. A Shelley self-driven by an inner tyranny to strike evil? Or a saint who will never draw the sword?
Among the guests were the two young Mitford sisters, no longer wearing blue print dresses, but tweed coats and skirts, with no hats. Hitler in their presence seemed light and gay. He spoke rapidly, but was also a courteous listener. I could see that his natural pace was much faster than the normal. He glanced at me several times, I could feel sympathy between us. He had the look of a falcon, but without the full liquid dark eyes: an eyeless hawk whose sockets had burned out in battle and later filled with sky. A man of spiritual grace who has gone down into the market place and taken on the materialists at their own selfish game. Has such direct action ever succeeded in history? Is it not the beginning of another corruption? I recall a line of Francis Thompson’s—about a girl, but it applies to us all. ‘Her own self-will made void her own self’s will.’ I am tremulous. Darling Melissa, reassure me.
May angels and ministers of light attend you.
During the review of the Reichswehr next day Phillip was down in the arena of the Luitpoldfeld, sitting on grass most of the time, peering between S.S. guards. During Hitler’s speech to the Reichswehr, about fifteen minutes, he saw not a helmet move down the massed files of the soldiers. They were standing to attention, too, and not ‘At Ease’. The helmets were immobile: grey masses with rounded blunt heads disappearing to the size and colour of poppy seeds. He thought there must have been at least an Army Corps on parade, well over a hundred thousand men. When the battalions went past for the salute, at
paradeschritt
—the goose step—the boots came down so hard on the tarmac that the flesh in the taut cheeks of the sword-carrying officers shook with each impact.
But it was the Luftwaffe which seemed to get most enthusiasm from the onlookers. The dais or box where Hitler and his entourage stood was behind Phillip, to one side, so that he was able to see the faces clearly. Göring beamed as the bombers flew past; Hitler looked mighty pleased. Well, thought Phillip, the standard of flying was just about up to that of the R.A.F. at Hendon which I had watched seven years before. The Luftwaffe was new,
amateurish. Was this the vaunted, the dreaded German Air Force? The ‘fearful power’ was surely exaggerated in the London papers; the R.A.F. could give them points on everything. Part of the dummy factory collapsed before the bombers were overhead, to the amusement of the crowd. There was formation flying in the pattern of a swastika; the star-turn was Udet’s lone power dive beginning from above the clouds. The onlookers were happy; Phillip got their feeling that the Army, Navy and Air Force were their protectors, so that they gave Germany equality and security. The tanks also looked to be 1928 standard.