The Vengeance of Rome (59 page)

After von Schirach and his lads had rounded the corner, Doctor Strasser turned his cheerful attention on me. Gregor Strasser's brother was a small man, scarcely taller than myself, but very dapper. His humorous, sardonic manner seemed completely natural to him. He looked at one slightly sideways. Neatly dropping his cigarette butt into the street, he took a small case from his pocket and offered me a smoke but I refused. I told him I had eaten no breakfast or lunch and was beginning to feel peckish.

If I gave him five minutes, he told me, he would be glad to take me to an excellent and very cheap restaurant. A little worried that back numbers of the party paper would be destroyed during or after the elections, he had come from Vienna to sort out some of the old copies. He had no spares, and everything was stored here at what had been the party HQ until they'd moved to the Brown House. He remembered this place in the old days before the Great Compromise, but now it wasn't inhabited much. Was I going to live in the flat?

In spite of Baldur von Schirach's animosity towards him, Gregor Strasser's brother Otto was exceptionally charming and far more engaging than his taciturn sibling. He had a mobile, vaguely Jewish, face which could not help but twinkle and smile.

It occurred to me momentarily that perhaps he indeed had Jewish blood, the reason for his volatility, but it was extremely unlikely. Given their policies the Nazis could not afford to be too careful on matters of early ancestry. For some time I had heard and ignored the persistent rumours of Hitler's own Jewish grandparents. The theory was that these part-Jews so hated the blood in their own veins that they strove to tear it from the body of Germany as they would tear it from themselves. A popular theory, but not one I necessarily subscribed to. Ludecke, whom I met later, believed that the most virulent antisemites had strong doses of Jewish blood. Rosenberg was certainly Jewish, he argued. He had known several such creatures. All possessed a certain pathos. But even Ludecke, that irredeemable cynic, would agree with me that whatever blood animated the Strasser family it came from the right side of the Mediterranean!

I began to answer but Doctor Strasser silenced me, a finger to his lips. He straightened his beret, put away his case, and began to sink back into the semi-darkness among huge towers of baled newspapers and magazines.

Come to think of it, he said, he was feeling hungry, too. He would be glad to treat me. I in turn must tell him all about England, which he was thinking of visiting soon. I told him I knew little more of England than did he. I had not been born there. I was an American.

‘Oh, you're the Hollywood actor Röhm's so taken with? The centre of gossip in Berlin and Vienna. You're not Jewish, are you?'

‘Of course not!' I laughed. I could see Strasser was trying to get a rise out of me. ‘But it's true Röhm and I have become great chums. We have much in common.'

‘He's a good man. I've hardly seen him since he came back from Bolivia to run the SA, but he's doing wonders already. I wish he was with me and not Hitler. His heart is much more with the Black Front than the Hitlerists. But like my brother he believes Hitler will take them to power. My brother already has more power than he ever thought he could get. He'll lose it if he trusts Hitler too much. Gregor is considered by everyone to be the “civilised” Nazi, and it is to him Streicher and Co. turn. But unless they move quickly they will find they have delivered all their influence to Hitler. Why does everyone think they can take power from Hitler once he has it? We all watched him climb and admired him. But now he is climbing over us. My brother should know better. And, indeed, so should Röhm, who has been around the “little corporal” longer than anyone.'

I presumed he spoke chiefly of the internal squabbling besetting most political parties and rarely noticed by the world outside. For a few minutes I stood in the doorway watching him rummage about in the room, then I told him I would return to my flat and see him in a little while. He grunted assent.

I rejoined him about quarter of an hour later feeling considerably more my old self. The envelope von Schirach had given me contained a substantial amount of money. The little flat was quiet, secure and I could use it to concentrate on my own work for a change. Meanwhile, I intended to cultivate the charming doctor, whose tongue was even looser than Röhm's.

Dusting his hands he emerged from behind a pile of newspapers, put down a box he had been filling and apologised. He lit another cigarette. ‘I am only looking for my own work. I can't afford to have it printed again.' Glancing around him he shook his head. He patted at a pile of magazines. ‘Not that long ago, my young friend, these dreams were mine. But now it's all corrupted.'

Then, shrugging his shoulders, he took me by the arm, pointed me back into the street, closed and locked the door behind us with his key, and led us in a graceful stroll towards the Viktualienmarkt.

‘Herr von Schirach didn't seem to like you.' Automatically I looked up and down to make sure we were not being followed.

‘Oh, he's all right. But he has to take Hitler's side in everything. I enjoy embarrassing him a bit. He's not a bad lad. Just an idiot. He thinks the sun shines out of Hitler's bottom!'

We walked slowly towards the market while Strasser explained at length and rather obscurely why he had split with Hitler who, in his view, had made the party into the means of getting personal power at any cost. Hitler had abandoned all their published principles. He would betray everyone who had trusted him, as well as those who had not. He was the reason why Strasser had left and was now based in Prague, where he could publish his refutations of Hitler's lies. ‘That bastard Göring, the gimpy snake in the grass, set up a rival paper and Hitler backed it. We had no choice but to sell our interests. I got next to nothing. I have still to see the puny sum I eventually settled for. But it's much worse than that.' Hitler had sold out all the Nazi principles and spat in the face of his supporters. His obsession with the pursuit of power for its own sake would be the end of us.

I had heard similar opinions from Röhm, by no means a slavish supporter of the Führer. A couple of years earlier there had been some kind of split in the NSDAP ranks. The Strasser brothers had taken the side of the more revolutionary party members, who wished to tear down the entire structure of the state and start afresh. Goebbels had initially been on their side but later shifted over to Hitler's camp. Money talked and Goebbels clearly had his price. But Hitler's debt to Big Business, Strasser argued, would mean that the industrialists would continue to control Germany. The situation would be worse than in Italy where Mussolini had sold off all the wealth of the country to the Pope and a few of his cronies. These businessmen, like Thyssen, Krupp and the rest, were the very people, according to Strasser, who had already brought the country down.

‘I'm not denying there exist interests forever alien to the German nation, but we weren't stabbed in the back. We had bad generals and a bunch of businessmen who were doing very well out of selling munitions and supplies to the army. Believe me, I love Ludendorff, but he was an idiot. Wars are won by the side which makes the least mistakes. Ludendorff made mistake after mistake, and every mistake cost a hundred thousand German lives. Those must never be repeated. These powerful people Hitler's talking
to will insist on mistakes being repeated. And they'll probably make a load of new ones as well! Two kinds of people should never be allowed near the politics of a country. One is businessmen, the other is soldiers. Whenever those interests start to climb into bed with each other, death and destruction follow for the common people. The creeps will be the ruin of us!' All of this Otto Strasser offered in a light-hearted tone which seemed at odds with his words. He continued to laugh as he walked beside me, a dapper figure in his bow tie and loose coat. Some years later John Betjeman, the BBC rhymester, would remind me of him.

While I had not been surprised at von Schirach's lack of insight into Hitler's character, I was thoroughly astonished at Strasser's understanding and hoped I did not show it! Strasser had no illusions. Hitler filled a vacuum. But it was a vacuum within a vacuum!

‘Time was he knew himself better than he does now. He's started believing the publicity stories. Hitler's a feminine type, with a destructive mission, not a constructive masculine one. When I met him just after the War, he saw himself as a drummer, a showman. I remember his saying how he felt like a sleepwalker. The crowd determines who he is. He says the crowd is his mistress, but in some ways the crowd is all he is. Nothing is real or genuine about him. Even the title Führer was imposed on him. The Nazis are creating a monster. What the Jews call a golem.'

Suddenly Otto Strasser grabbed my sleeve and dragged me down some basement steps into the dark panelled wood of a restaurant with peeling walls and faded floral pictures just visible through a haze of delicious steam. The narrow room was crammed with heavy stained wooden tables and poorly lit by oil lamps. Two grey-haired women were selling cakes from behind a counter display but abandoned their customers when they saw Otto Strasser, greeting him with glad, maternal cries, sitting us down at the best table, getting us a clean menu, telling us not to have the
Rotkraut
but that the dumplings were fresh.

A wild barking, and from the back of the kitchen came a little dachshund which somehow reminded me, in its perky manner, of my new friend. He petted the dog. He giggled at its antics. He gave it a lump of sugar. His soft, elegant hands stroked its happy head. Our meal arrived, working-class food, wholesome and filling. Strasser ate with considerable relish, talking between bites and I, also, found the food very much to my taste, similar to Russian food in many ways. My muscles and bones relaxed for the first time in days. The strain of the previous night had left its mark.

I was very glad to have met Otto Strasser, a man with a good idea of
Hitler's duality. He shared the idealism of everyone around the Führer and had no motive for wishing to see the Nazi Party lose the seats it had won. What was more, Strasser was a man of principle, and an eternal optimist!

When we left the restaurant, Strasser wanted to buy some apples. He led me through another doorway into a newer part of the great Viktualienmarkt. The busy bustle of the afternoon had been replaced by an early-evening lull, a sense of waiting. As we walked up to a fruit stall, I heard the barrel organ sounding again. I turned, scarcely aware of my own quickness of movement, and sought the source.

In a dusty ray of late sunshine, the child dancer I had seen earlier stood at rest. Behind her, on his master's shoulder, the red-coated monkey jumped and gibbered, taking his little fez off and on to the cheap tinkling of the instrument's mechanical heart.

I gasped at the familiarity of it. I might have been gazing again on my gypsy love, the young beauty I had so long ago been forbidden to see. For a second her eyes met mine, and I was sure she recognised something in me.

Strasser bought his apples and was grinning at me. ‘What is she? A relative? If not, she's probably for sale.'

I grew a little warm. ‘She reminds me of someone I knew as a child.'

‘They have gypsies in America, too? My God, they've spread everywhere!'

But these were not gypsies. Their kind was found in most big German cities. They were Italians, earning their living as street entertainers.

This time it was Strasser who drew me away from my little Zoyea, but I went less reluctantly than before. She and I were soulmates. Those glances had proved it. I knew it was possible to see her again. As soon as I could I would return to the market to watch her dance. What was her name? Whenever I closed my own eyes I saw hers. They were curious eyes, knowing eyes, not entirely innocent eyes. There was no doubt about it. Zoyea was reincarnated. Restored to me. She had recognised me, as I had recognised her.

Sie bewegte sich schlendernd wie ein Junge. Dennoch glaubte ich, dass sie an mir Gefallen gefunden hatte. Vielleicht zogen mich jene Augen an, mit denen sie in sexueller Berechnung jedes Lebewesen zu taxieren schien …

But this was natural to my little earth spirit. We were fated, I knew, to become wonderful friends again.

Otto Strasser was a man of complex charm and quick intellect. Very open, he told me much about himself. An academic doctor, a literary writer, a naturally sociable and sardonic companion, he had his degree in anthropology and through the persuasions of his chemist brother had only reluctantly been drawn into politics.

While rejecting the Russian model, Doctor Strasser was a convinced and serious socialist, a German nationalist to the marrow. He was horrified by Hitler's willingness to seek the financiers' aid rather than seize power through revolution. Matters came to a head in 1930, and Strasser left to form the Black Front. The party was relatively small, its leader scarcely a threat to anyone, but Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich and Himmler still pursued Strasser relentlessly, attempting to ruin and intimidate him. Regretfully, Gregor Strasser had failed to help in any serious way.

‘I know I should give it all up. Write some popular books about pygmies and peasant attitudes, but I can't. I'm an embarrassment. While I allowed myself to be guided by Hitler, I was a hero, he said. Then I began to see flaws in his arguments. I am regarded as an enemy by Big Business as well as by Bolshevik Jewry. Gregor's instincts are to build bridges between all factions. He's an optimist! He's a more typical, good-natured, easygoing Bavarian than I am. He believes everyone unconsciously wants to get along together. I have warned him not to trust Hitler. Hitler uses people and then discards them. Hitler will ruin him. What else can I say or do?'

I had every respect for Otto Strasser even if I did not share his left-wing views. He knew I believed socialism to be a disease which attacks the soul, an infection carried on the air by word of mouth. He eventually came to accept that when he returned to Germany after the Second War. Finding
shelter with the Canadians, Doctor Strasser was one of the few true National Socialists to survive the Second World War.