The Vengeance of Rome (60 page)

He wrote me a letter a few years ago. Posted from Munich. ‘They have restored my citizenship,' he told me. Hitler knew the meaning of denying German citizenship to a nationalist like Otto Strasser. But this still did not make me comfortable with his socialism, though we were certainly in complete agreement on the Jewish Question.

He demonstrated the difference between us, say, and Hitler. What so few people now understand. There is a considerable difference between a rational interpretation of a problem and a visceral reaction against an entire people. Both Doctor Strasser and myself agreed on the rational approach. The easiest way to rid oneself of Jewish influence was to make it difficult for Jews to disguise themselves.

By this, of course, we did not mean a return to the ludicrous medieval approach of making Jews wear some kind of yellow badge. We saw no reason to permit Jews or Catholics full nationality while both paid homage to foreign leadership. Attacking their dignity and self-respect was cruel. We simply wanted to change their political status, requiring an oath that they were loyal to Germany first and that their interests were German interests. A tax structure could be introduced which made it more attractive to be a true German and accept the responsibilities as well as the benefits of full citizenship, which should not be denied to any decently qualified person, no matter what their racial origin. Until then you would be treated as a respected guest worker in the country, always welcome while you pulled your weight. After a period of qualification, you would swear loyalty to Germany as new immigrants in America must swear loyalty to the United States, forsaking all others. Indeed, all schoolchildren in America are required to take the oath of loyalty every morning. He suspected other countries would soon see the sense of it.

Doctor Strasser did not, like me, feel a strong call of blood. I had no animosity towards Jews. I simply knew Jews would be happier in a home-land better suited to their natures. Their vibrant, volatile blood yearned for a Mediterranean climate. Those exotic hearts came to full flower in the bazaar and the oasis, where gold has an almost supernatural value. Those abstract, intellectual minds could sit and argue to their hearts' content. Artists could plan their canvases and plays. No action would ever be required of them. They would be home. They would be happy. They could study and talk as all Jews would rather do while the waters of Palestine were theirs to drink and the fruits of Israel theirs to eat. They deserved a homeland.

Isn't it what we all desire most? In the thirties I became a convinced Zionist and remain one to this day. I am deeply philosemitic. I do share with many Jews, however, the conviction that intermarriage is a mistake.

Otto Strasser believed Hitler's approach to the problem was psychological rather than political, which Strasser thought made Hitler unfit to lead. Germany had almost been destroyed by its sentimental liberalism, attempting to eat its cream cake and share it. The opposite side of that coin was conservative bigotry and blustering militarism. We had to look at realities and offer the people a genuine alternative to Soviet tyranny and Big Business manipulation. Strasser's Third Way would steer a prudent course between the two, taking the best from both systems. He spoke bitterly of his Kampfverlag, which once dominated Nazi publishing in Prussia. First Gregor had sold his third to Hitler, for some mysterious favour, then Hinkel, the other partner, had sold his third share to Hitler, lured by the offer of a Reichstag seat. The other third, Otto's, was of course valueless. He was a revolutionary. He had no desire to be elected. He knew the compromises one had to make. As a result Hitler had begun a smear campaign against him, calling him a ‘parlour-Bolshevik' and worse.

I didn't take this as seriously as Strasser. Slanging matches were a familiar feature of modern German public life. Those with standards tended to stand back from them. Yet that evening I learned far more from Strasser than I could easily absorb of German politics and internal NSDAP rivalries. He filled in the specifics, although I have never been much interested in minor details. As a Russian visionary the larger issues have been all-important. It is for others, of a more ordinary temperament, to concern themselves with the fine print. Like Hitler, I am a prophet rather than practical politician, and I suspect this was also true of Otto Strasser.

Gregor was instead somewhat narrowly pragmatic. His temperament would be the end of him. He would be shot in a concrete prison room, disbelievingly running from corner to corner as Heydrich's bullets sought him through the cell window. A ricochet finished him. A clumsy death for a compromised soul. How I mourn for those poor creatures! How I wish I could go back in time and alert them. If only they had been warned, they might have fled the country. But they believed they could win their case through argument and reason. They never learned the lessons of the trenches, when a bullet not a ballot decided the fate of an unpopular officer.

Everyone close to the Führer understood he was an inspirational symbol rather than a practical leader. It did not disturb them that he had human traits. Röhm and Gregor Strasser were party to his most disgusting
secrets yet remained loyal to Hitler. Their own interest was bound to his. What he represented was more important than what he was. The Crown once represented the spirit of Germany. Now Hitler represented it. He was not merely the head of a political party, he was what the young these days call a ‘guru'. None of his intimates ever expected him to take the daily reins of power. If his followers accepted the power, they had to accept the responsibility. ‘But they're afraid of the responsibility, most of them.' Otto had shaken his head. He felt the calibre of the Nazis wasn't what it should be. Apart from Göring, Hitler's men were not greatly interested in publicity. Power was what obsessed them. It was what they engaged with inside the party. It suited them to have the public worship Hitler. They knew that public worship could turn to public rage and already had plans in place to take over from him. A few years later Mussolini would learn exactly that lesson. He died as the emperors of old had died when they had fallen out of favour, bloodily and without dignity. In the end neither of these men rose to full potential. Otto could see this better than I. The dictators remain to this day a great disappointment to me. They failed to bear the burden they had sworn to carry. They promised Glory and brought only Shame. To the last they did all they could to put their responsibility on to other shoulders. Only Franco survived, and in many ways he was the least of them. More a reactionary than a progressive visionary.

Hitler, shivering in his bunker, Eva Braun comforting him, her eyes bright with excitement at the prospect of their marriage, heard of Mussolini's horrible end and knew he and she would suffer no better at the hands of the Red Army. Hitler understood only too well what torments and disgusting horrors awaited him. A Catholic, he faced the knowledge that the hell he had made on earth was nothing to the hell he would suffer in death. Yet he was prepared to meet Satan rather than be subject to the punishments of Stalin. He was by no means the only one. That is how seriously he took the Red Menace. But some cursed him for his suicide. They believed he had failed his people in their final hours.

Was this Austrian fecklessness of Hitler's really the nub of the falling-out in 1929–30? Otto demanded Hitler take responsibility, not pass it back or shrug it off. The younger Strasser was not interested in power either. Ultimately I suspect he was also unwilling to accept responsibility. He was someone who blossomed best in opposition.

Political disagreements aside, Doctor Otto Strasser was stimulating company. Indeed, in the absence of Röhm, he became almost my only substantial company. We dined together the next night, as he was staying
at a small hotel nearby. After a simple supper in a local bistro, we took the tram back into central Munich to the famous Hofbräuhaus. The city at night was full of festive light. The blaze of the trams in the warm autumn air, the sound of a distant brass band, the happy laughter of the people all took me again to my past in Odessa, to those golden days before a few alien financiers and their stooges determined we were too happy, enjoying too much progress and therefore not making them enough money. Munich was like Odessa at her best, not the city of marching mobs and street violence, wretched poverty and cruelty which the documentaries always show to explain Hitler. I saw a few starving children, a few beggars, some ex-servicemen working as street traders and the occasional whore—only what you expected in any large city.

Munich's atmosphere promised happier more hopeful days. Her people knew how to relish their pleasures. The huge green and brown Hofbräuhaus, with its massive wooden galleries and stairways, was a mighty machine for beer drinking. Tier upon tier, bench upon bench of men in lederhosen and huntsmen's homespun, women with floral embroidered aprons and great plaited bunches of blonde hair, hundreds of red or black swastikas on brawny Brownshirt arms. Oktoberfest being at its height, the beer hall also sheltered the cheerful peasants I had seen in the market, by now a little the worse for drink, taking full advantage of their womenfolk remaining at home for at least a few more days. The hall was noticeably pro-Hitler with Nazi advertising and flags everywhere. Doctor Strasser admired the posters' style. He said that the Nazis and the Commies had tremendous aesthetic sense. Their artwork was created by the best graphic artists in Germany. Some beer halls played both sides or were clearly anti-Nazi, but here Hitler was the local boy made good.

Otto Strasser waved his arms at the surrounding campaign posters. ‘Have you noticed how phallic the best Nazi propaganda is now? I'm sure it's deliberate!' Again he giggled. ‘It started with our steel helmets, eh? Do you think it's some sort of compensation? All those stiff arms going up and down? All those stiff legs pumping? Has it ever struck you how Mussolini's pictures do their best to make him look like a gigantic prick? Clearly all that sort of thing works, wouldn't you say? But do we really want to give the world to people who would rather follow a penis than a principle?'

He made me laugh spontaneously for the first time in ages. His irreverence helped me recover my mental stability. Soon I was my old self again, and the whole incident at Tegernsee a fading nightmare. I had, after all, put worse behind me. Though scarcely one of Hitler's closest friends, Strasser
knew the man better than most and had little reverence for him. I enjoyed his comments.

‘He is amorphous, eh? Whatever we desire or feel? Did you ever see that film about the Jewish monster,
The Golem
? Isn't Hitler a golem? The amalgam of everything a Jew has nightmares about, yes?' As usual, he responded enthusiastically to his own somewhat repetitive humour.

Given that these opinions were offered in one of Hitler's strongholds, the very beer hall from which he had organised the famous 1923 putsch attempt, I thought Doctor Strasser rather brave. But he had forgotten where he was. As a passing hard-faced Brownshirt carrying a tray scowled at him, Strasser paused. His quick tongue had got him into trouble but now it saved him. ‘And that is why the Führer is our best shield against the aliens!' he added loudly.

In a murmur, he continued, ‘How can you trust anyone now? Aren't they all to some degree corrupted? Even my brother Gregor. He couldn't live on a Reichstag representative's salary. Can you credit that? Don't they all have their Big Business patrons now? Even Röhm?'

I shook my head in thorough disbelief. ‘Röhm agrees with everything you say. His money comes entirely from contributions by party members.'

‘Then he's the only one, no? Thyssen and Hugenberg back Hitler, Farben backs Gregor and Röhm. The Stabschef isn't building that ludicrous house on his party pay. And if Hugenberg's in, then so, of course, is Krupp. When Krupp joins, surely the Americans, French and British will all start covering their bets and backing the National Socialists, too? Ford, IBM, Hearst already back Hitler, knowing he will bring stability. They don't care about the nature of our leadership as long as it guarantees their investments. So Hitler's already getting promises of American backing! Success breeds success. Soon he'll have Scandinavian, Dutch and Italian money, too. A snowball, my dear Peters. Or a concrete ball, maybe … ?'

I wondered if my new acquaintance were not a little jealous of his ex-comrades, so I changed the subject, saying how sorry I felt at Hitler's loss. He seemed to have cared a great deal for his niece. But this was a strategic mistake! I set Strasser off again. He became heated, conspiratorial, and began drinking rather recklessly.

‘She told me things.' Doctor Strasser offered me a significant leer. ‘She told Goebbels things, when he was still in our office. And Hanfstaengl knows about Father Stempfle, Schwartz and the pornographic pictures. Schwartz was working there at Corneliusstrasse when he was asked to get the money together to pay off the blackmailer. Hitler came in one morning.
He was desperate. I don't know how they raised the money. The party was broke then. The blackmailer was, I'm convinced, the old hermit Stempfle himself, an Hieronymite by calling but much else besides. He insisted the money was owed to him. He's always hated Hitler. He wrote most of
Mein Kampf
, and Hitler simply took it over. Until Max Amann asked Stempfle to look at it, Hitler's original was unpublishable. It was repetitive and illogical. Hitler copied Stempfle's articles out of the Munich papers and used them as his own speeches! Have you heard that hysterical old priest on the subject? You'd never guess he was a man of the cloth! Though he probably only joined to suffer the little children to come unto him …'

‘Fräulein Raubal, some say, had an unnatural relationship with her uncle?' Back in that room for a moment, I was already sailing closer to the black wind than was prudent. Without the mitigating balance of cocaine I had not willingly drunk so much alcohol in a long time, and my head was beginning to swim again.