Through the Eye of Time Page 5

  So this time I will talk to Felix first and ask his advice. If he assures me that the idea is practicable (and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be) we can go ahead and produce a trial batch in the factory. Then will be the moment to announce it to the jabbering apes.

  Had a quiet word with Goebbels during the afternoon. He was passing by my office – deliberately going out of his way it seemed to me – and stopped to inquire after the Führer’s health. I assured him that he was well and in good spirits, whereupon Goebbels lowered his voice and asked had I noticed the slight trembling in the Führer’s left hand. As a matter of fact I had, and told him so, remarking that in my professional opinion it was nothing serious, probably nervous strain due to overwork.

  ‘We are in the Führer’s hands,’ Goebbels said in his quiet, even tone, always the mark of an educated man. ‘And the Führer is in yours. Never forget that. I wish you to know that you have my fullest confidence.’

  ‘Thank you, Herr Reichsminister,’ I replied. ‘If I can perform my duties with the same zeal and expertise as your good self none of us need have any worries.’

  A brief bleak smile passed across his face, and not being a man ready with his smiles it was reward enough. We understand and respect each other; that is my abiding impression.

  I congratulated him on the birth of a son – his third or fourth I think it is – and he said, ‘There are many ways of making Germany strong. Frau Goebbels and I believe we have a sacred duty to build for the future. Young German manhood – our finest investment.’ Then his lean sallow face took on a humorous aspect and he said in a teasing manner:

  ‘I trust you are investing in the future, Morell, even though you are a bachelor.’

  I assured him in the same jocular fashion that I was doing my utmost to ensure the potency and longevity of the Reich in an unofficial capacity.

  ‘You do not have a regular ladyfriend?’

  ‘Not as such,’ I answered carefully. ‘I would rather spread my investment. There is a particular young lady, Eva – I do not think you know her, Herr Reichsminister, a mutual friend of Hoffman—’

  Goebbels narrowed his eyes. ‘The photographer?’ He has an astounding memory for faces and names, even those he has met once and only briefly.

  ‘That is correct. She works as a photographic model for fashion plates and the like. She is a good friend and companion. I will introduce her to you, if that is permitted. She would be thrilled to meet you.’

  ‘It is always my pleasure to meet charming young ladies,’ said Goebbels.

  While he was in this relaxed frame of mind I thought it a suitable moment to ask his opinion of the imminent visit by the British Fascist leader. Did he share the Führer’s hopes that the meeting would set the seal on our plans for the next three years?

  Goebbels considered for a moment. He is never one to utter rash pronouncements, without due thought. ‘A great deal depends on the attitude of the British Press. If there is the merest hint of warmongering I think the meeting could prove detrimental to our purposes. Mandrake is a clever man but sometimes his cleverness oversteps the boundary of plain common sense. He is not a pragmatist; he wants results now, quickly, without the bother of discrete and calculated moves in the right direction. We must send him home with something to crow about – but it must be the right thing, eminently sensible and praiseworthy in the eyes of the British people.’

  ‘You have discussed this with the Führer?’ I inquired.

  ‘The Führer, I think, appreciates the need for caution; his excesses will be held in check. But yes, to answer your original question, I believe the meeting to be absolutely crucial. Which is why the Führer’s health concerns me. Everything possible must be done to safeguard his stamina and performance. I think you understand me.’

  ‘I do indeed, Herr Reichsminister. May I repeat that you need have no qualms in that direction. The Führer will be well cared for in every conceivable respect.’

  This chat enlivened my spirits considerably. Within the Chancellery it is easy to become secretive to the point of paranoia, believing everyone to be plotting against you in one way or another. Now I feel that my work has not gone unappreciated: Goebbels has tremendous influence and to count him as an ally in the maelstrom of inter-departmental intrigues is reassuring to me privately and prestigious in the day-to-day politicking which is such a wearisome feature of public office.

  It has also been useful, I will not deny, in encouraging me to experiment with other preparations. One I have in mind is a sulphonamide compound which was injected into rats to increase their resistance to influenza and was by all accounts a great success. It hasn’t been tested on human beings yet, though I don’t see why it shouldn’t have a similar prophylactic effect: In any case I can begin with small amounts and, all being well, increase the dosage over a period.

  One fly in the ointment (felicitous phrase, ha-ha) is the constant interference by von Hasselbach, who just because he has treated the Führer in the past thinks he has sole authority to decide what medication should be prescribed. I will not tolerate this busybodying, and already I have a little plan hatching to put von Hasselbach’s nose out of joint. If he isn’t careful he’ll find himself as junior medical intern in one of the camps Himmler is constructing in the Eastern Province. If the truth be told he’s afraid that he’s lost the confidence of the Führer and is now trying to stir up trouble at the slightest opportunity. He said to me the other day: ‘How can you prescribe those devilish Antigas Pills for stomach cramp? Heaven knows what foul poisons they contain.’

  My answer was that they did the trick: the Führer reported an immediate improvement – in a matter of hours, I told him – and was able to perform his ablutions without discomfort. These old-fashioned practitioners are really laughable in the way they cling to so-called ‘simple and natural’ methods of treatment. Give me chemicals any day. ‘What are drugs for,’ I asked him, ‘if not to be used to treat patients? Next you’ll be telling me to bleed him with leeches.’

  At this his face turned purple and the veins in his neck swelled up. ‘The question is one of diagnosis,’ he blustered. ‘Stomach cramps could have any one of a dozen causes, some of them serious. How do we know that the condition isn’t operable?’

  There I had him. The Führer, as is well known, cannot stand the sight of blood; the mere thought of it makes him feel faint and sickly, and so I said, ‘Are you, my dear Hans, proposing that we butcher the Führer? Are you going to open him up and poke around inside? And are you going to be the one to tell him?’

  His face had lost some of its colour and his eyes went very small in his head. The idea of broaching the subject of surgery to the Führer had a tranquillizing, one might almost say (hee-hee) paralysing, effect. Von Hasselbach licked his lips and then blathered on for a while about ‘symptoms’ and ‘diagnoses’ and the dangers of what he termed ‘untried remedies’.

  ‘Then by all means put your point of view forward,’ I encouraged him. ‘You have my permission. I’m sure the Führer will listen to what you have to say in his usual calm and receptive manner.’

  I was smiling as I said this, and judging from von Hasselbach’s expression he gathered from my kindly suggestion the inference intended. There was nothing more to be said. But any more pigheaded meddling from that quarter and I shall spike his career once and for all. In the Eastern Province he can meddle to his heart’s content.

  Returning from luncheon I saw Elisabeth and her young man eating their sandwiches in the Tiergarten. He is tall and blond and, I suppose, handsome in a brutal sort of way. All shoulders, arse and boots. I have never understood the mesmerizing effect that uniforms have on women. She was looking at him like a helpless young fawn, obviously totally entranced by his blond hair and black uniform and large red ears. He holds a lowly position in Himmler’s circle of depravity but no doubt his true Aryan characteristics will guarantee a swift rise through the ranks.

  Of that we shall see.

  Berlin, August
1938

  Mandrake made a splendid first impression on the Proletariat.

  He has a tall, thin figure, ramrod-straight. Striking in profile and a natural showman. On the way from the airport he rode through the streets in an open car, standing next to the Führer, the pair of them saluting the cheering crowds and whipping them into a frenzy of excitement. Girls ran alongside and threw garlands of flowers into the car: a great festive occasion and just the right image to convey to the press and film cameras.

  I was following in a staff car with Goering, Bormann and a member of the Abwehr, our much vaunted and totally useless Intelligence Service run by that dolt Canaris. Goering commented that the Führer seemed to have gained several inches in height, for he was on a par with Mandrake and yet on level ground shorter by a head. I saw Bormann and the Abwehr man exchange glances, though nothing was said. The fact of the matter is that I personally had anticipated what the drive might entail, i.e. the saluting, cheering crowds and so on, and had spoken to Erich Kempka, the Führer’s chauffeur, and suggested that a small wooden platform be discreetly fitted into the car to make it appear that the two men were of equal height. This was done, thus saving the Führer from losing face (and height), and had been the cause of Goering’s uncharitable and typically boorish observation.

  Thank goodness we rarely see the man; yet even once a month in conference is once too often, and his disruptive and negative influence even then is disastrous to many a carefully laid scheme. ‘The Father of the Luftwaffe’ indeed – it’s a wonder we have an air force at all with that cretin in command.

  Mandrake spoke from the balcony of the Chancellery – in faultless German I am pleased to record – and it was quite apparent that the crowd had taken him to their hearts. Then the Führer stepped up to the microphone and delivered a magnificent speech, in full hot-blooded fervour, emphasizing once again the close links between our two great nations and calling on the rest of Europe to pay heed to ‘these two cousins’, as he referred to them, joining together in selfless interest to promote the ‘New United Europe’. ‘Let us be strong,’ he concluded, ‘because only in strength can we be magnanimous!’

  This brought such a roar from the crowd that the Führer smiled and beckoned to Mandrake, who stepped up to the microphone and the two leaders linked arms in a stirring symbolic gesture which will surely go down in history as one of the most emotional and heart-warming embraces of all time. The noise was stupendous. I confess that my eyes were blurred at that moment, but blinking away the tears I caught sight of Goebbels, smiling and nodding enthusiastically, his narrow lean face aglow with the impassioned ferment of the crowd, the speeches, the spectacle. It was superlative stage-management.

  Afterwards a reception was held in Mandrake’s honour and I was introduced to him. He is a charming man, incisive, witty, and one of the shrewdest political analysts I have ever known. He gave his opinions frankly, yet at the same time was sympathetic to our difficult position vis-à-vis the Polish question. Interestingly enough he found parallels in Great Britain’s attitude towards France, saying that the harassment of British shipping by the French Navy was something that, were he Prime Minister, would not be tolerated. This I took to be a reference to the recent incident in the English Channel when French gunboats intercepted a British cargo vessel and escorted her into Le Havre on the pretext that she was running contraband into the Channel ports.

  A trumped-up charge, Mandrake maintained, and yet so far the British Government had hesitated to make any positive move apart from a tentative protest through diplomatic channels.

  ‘It’s a question of honour, is it not?’ I said, and Mandrake readily agreed. I then asked what was the reaction of the British people to Press reports that the Reich was gearing itself for war. Did they accept such reports as being objective statements of fact?

  Mandrake thought not. He said that the Press was sharply divided. Some newspapers and journals, notably those with a left-wing bias, were making all kinds of ridiculous claims about the so-called ‘German militarization programme’ while other sections, the more sober-minded and sensible, calmly pointed out that every sovereign nation had the right and the duty to protect itself from potential aggression.

  His final judgement, I surmised, was that the British people wanted some form of tangible reassurance that Germany was a peace-loving nation whose leaders sought nothing more sinister than to join hands with their ‘island cousins’.

  Bormann, standing nearby, had listened to all this in silence, just occasionally raising his heavily-lidded eyes, his square stolid face betraying no emotion. Now he spoke up and said that in his opinion the British people were short of only one thing – leadership. The people would follow if others were willing to lead. There was to be an election in the autumn, was there not? What better opportunity to put the hypothesis to the test?

  Whether he was testing Mandrake or merely voicing an opinion I do not know: Bormann is an odd fellow, taciturn, morose, a real cold fish, and like the rest of his fishy race possesses a mind which normal warm-blooded creatures find difficult to comprehend.

  In any case Mandrake would not be drawn. He nodded once or twice, which might have indicated assent or perhaps the politeness of a guest hiding his yawning indifference before one of his host’s bumptious buffoons. The upshot of this was to increase my respect for Mandrake and harden the distrust and suspicion I already felt for the secretive and molelike Bormann, second-in-command to Hess.

  *

  It is three a.m. and I have just this minute returned from the Führer’s bedroom. He relies on me more and more.

  After the reception the toadying von Hasselbach suggested he rest for an hour, not knowing that I had injected him twice that morning with 250 mg. of dextrose and concentrated hormones. Consequently the Führer was in peak condition (essential for such an important occasion) and still keyed up with nervous energy. He gave von Hasselbach one of those blank yet curiously hypnotic stares which chill the blood of most people, saying that he would rest when he felt like resting and not a moment sooner. Von Hasselbach seemed to shrink visibly in front of us all, a gathering of forty or more in the Führer’s private apartments overlooking the Chancellery gardens.

  Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop and several of the others looked at von Hasselbach piteously and then turned away as if he were a leper; his days in the Sanctum are numbered, of that there’s little doubt.

  Mandrake retired early, exhausted after his flight and the day’s hectic celebrations, leaving about a dozen senior members of the Chancellery and their personal attendants. We stood in a large informal group with the Führer as centre-piece, still elated with the day’s events and what he regarded as his own personal triumph of political strategy: the appearance of two great leaders in agreement over Europe and in perfect harmony.

  His spring, you might say, was being wound tighter and tighter. As he talked he got carried away with his own inner vision, which in turn fed his eloquence and he went on and on, swivelling on the heels of his boots, his fingers jabbing stiffly to make a point, his right fist jerking up and down to drive home the importance of what he was saying, and then the fleshy smack as the fist hit the palm of his hand, doing this again and again and again.

  His colour was high; his blue-grey eyes had taken on that dulled vacant expression as when a person is not in full possession of his faculties but following blindly the tenuous line of some driving inner compulsion. It was all there in his head: the others, to judge from their faces, didn’t doubt it for a second. Yes, the vision was there all right, locked inside that cranium, but only he could see it – they saw it through him – being enacted in front of them by this short stumpy man with the glossy slicked-down hair and abrupt black brushstroke of a moustache.

  I remember glancing at my watch and seeing that he had been talking without pause or interruption for almost forty minutes. The rest of the party, I’m sure, hadn’t noticed the passage of time; they were spellbound by the Führer’s voice as it went o
n and on with that barking staccato stridency which over a period tended to numb the senses. I could see he wouldn’t last much longer. I looked over my shoulder and caught the eye of Julius Schaub, the Führer’s adjutant. He read my meaning and moved quietly to collect my bag from the window alcove, placing it on a chair within easy reach. I indicated the assembly and nodded towards the tall doors leading to the ante-room, holding up five fingers, a prearranged sign that in five minutes the Führer would collapse and he was to clear the room and lock all the doors.

  I was thirty seconds out in my calculations. The Führer paused in mid-sentence, his colour changed, almost as swiftly as it takes to set down the fact, and he took two faltering steps backwards. It might have been deliberate on his part, the others weren’t to know, and for ten seconds there was absolute silence as everyone watched his rigid figure, the right fist curled and poised to crack into the palm, a faint smear of saliva gleaming wetly at the corner of his mouth.

  Goebbels looked at once in my direction, sensing that something was wrong, and I nodded to Julius and pointed at the door. The room was cleared in under a minute, the doors were locked, and Julius returned to help me. Together we laid the Führer down on one of the couches, loosened his clothing, and from my bag I took out the syringe I had prepared: a 500 mg. solution of picrotoxin and morphine sulphate, a powerful stimulant combined with a narcotic relaxant. It was rather a large dose, the biggest so far, but his resistance to drugs is increasing at an astonishing rate.