World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head. Jack Higgins
not talking about Ludendorff, who everyone knows is only half dotty. We’re talking about Hitler, a madman.’
‘I don’t know how carefully you follow Hitler’s speeches,’ Peter told her with the dispassionate moderation that he’d learned from his law professor. ‘But I read through some of his speeches. Hitler is being described as “the new Messiah” and he cultivates this. He condemns moral decay, corruption, and vice and is able to rally round him people with very differing views: that is his skill.’
‘I’ve heard all that tosh,’ said Fischer. ‘But if you listen to Hitler, you’d think that all the vice and corruption in the world are here in Berlin.’ He stroked his beard and looked to Inge for approval. She smiled at him but then turned back to look at Peter.
‘He does,’ agreed Peter mildly. ‘But that appeals to the Bavarians. Those damn southerners. They like to see Berlin as the base of centralism, the home of the Prussian military – which they fear and despise – and Protestant Berliners as the greatest obstacle to their aim of restoring a Bavarian kingdom, complete with Catholic monarchy. Hilter skilfully panders to all these feelings.’
Fischer said, ‘And those Bavarians see Berlin as a place controlled by Jewish capitalists. It suits their anti-Semitic nature.’
The band started playing a Lehár waltz. ‘It’s a crime not to be dancing,’ said Frau Wisliceny. ‘Inge, is this dance booked?’
‘No, Mama.’
Frau Wisliceny looked pointedly at Richard Fischer, who immediately asked Inge to dance.
Peter would have asked her sister Lisl to dance, if only as a way to annoy Hennig, but Hennig was too quick for him and whirled his wife away onto the dance floor with no more than a curt nod to them.
Someone invited Frau Wisliceny to dance and, left alone, Peter Winter turned to watch two soldiers who were standing near the bar. One of them was Fritz Esser, of course. There was no way of avoiding recognition of the debt he owed him, but he didn’t have to approve of the fellow’s activities or of the horrid little homosexual who’d come here with him. And Peter thought it appalling that the two men should have arrived in their comic-opera uniforms. Captain Graf was wearing the modified uniform of an army captain. Esser wore a new sort of uniform: brown shirt, breeches, boots, and Sam-Browne-style leather belt and shoulder strap. Both men were members of the uniformed ‘army’ that the notorious Captain Ernst Röhm commanded – under ever-changing titles – as a military arm for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. ‘Storm troopers’, they called themselves.
Peter Winter hated the Nazis almost as much as he hated the communists. He distrusted their cavalier use of words such as ‘freedom’, ‘honour’, ‘bread’ and ‘security’. He believed that only stupid people could define the failings and opportunities of this complex world by means of trite catchall mottos.
Deep down he had always hoped that by some miracle he’d wake up and find himself back in a well-ordered world run from the Imperial Palace by that autocrat Kaiser Wilhelm, who cared nothing for what the Reichstag decreed. But, gradually and grudgingly, he’d come to believe that the new postwar constitution provided a truly democratic framework by means of which Germany would again become the greatest nation in the world.
Despite his distaste for socialism, Peter Winter was that evening one of the very few people in the Winter house – or, indeed, in the whole city – who supported Ebert, the socialist president. Germany must be run by the law; that was why he was studying to be a lawyer. The organized violence of communists and Nazis was a threat to the law, to the stability of German middle-class society, and therefore to everything that Peter held dear.
So Peter Winter found it difficult to conceal his hostility as he walked over to where Captain Graf was talking to Fritz Esser. He hated these men not only for what they were but because of their continuing association with Pauli. He had a sense of foreboding that made him want to protect his younger brother from these unpleasant rascals. At least he’d been able to persuade Pauli to leave Graf’s wretched Freikorps. Had he remained in Munich with them much longer, there was little doubt that Pauli would have become a Nazi stormtrooper and been here tonight in one of these ridiculous uniforms.
‘Not dancing, gentlemen?’ said Peter provocatively. He signalled to the waiter for more champagne for his guests. They knew who he was, of course, Graf had met him before, and Esser had known him from the time he’d pulled him out of the sea off Travemünde.
‘We are talking business,’ said Graf. He had a notebook in his hand, and he was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles to read from it.
‘Come along! This is a celebration. Drink! Dance! Have fun!’
Neither of the two men could decide how to respond to Peter’s friendly words, but both knew they were being mocked. As he turned his head, Graf’s spectacle lenses flashed with the reflections of the grand chandeliers, and his fierce eyes showed anger.
When the servant had poured wine for both men, Esser lifted his glass in salute. ‘Prosit!’ he said and grinned broadly. Peter bowed and took his leave of them.
‘The place is full of Jews,’ Graf told Esser once Peter Winter had gone. ‘And the Winter family have grown rich and fat feasting on the corpses of our comrades.’
‘Our time will come,’ said Esser. He put a thumb into his belt and stood surveying the dancers like a lion tamer.
Captain Graf was looking at the far end of the room, where four young girls in scanty sequined two-piece outfits had suddenly started their dance. Captain Graf didn’t share Esser’s appreciation for half-naked girls, and he turned away with a scowl on his face. ‘Jewish, capitalist filth!’ said Graf.
Esser grunted and continued to watch the floor show. The girls were Pauli Winter’s idea; they’d been specially brought over to the house from a Revue-Bar. Esser recognized the dancers, and the girls knew him. His face was known at every drinking place in Berlin, from the Kempi on Leipziger Strasse to the sleazy little bars on Invalidenstrasse where pimps plied their trade. Esser, unlike Graf, liked girls. He drank his champagne. He had long ago learned that everything of which Captain Graf disapproved was ‘Jewish, capitalist filth’, and until now he had never dared to contradict his boss. But the past year had seen a change in Esser’s loyalties. He’d been close enough to the Nazi Party leadership to know that Graf’s hero – and immediate commander – Röhm was not blindly loyal to Hitler. Soon there must come a confrontation between Röhm’s uniformed SA – Sturmabteilung – and the grey-faced civilians of the Nazi Party leadership, and Esser had decided that, whether Hitler got a prison sentence or not, his future was with ‘Der Chef’. ‘They are damned good dancers,’ said Esser defiantly and applauded the Revue-Bar girls. Captain Graf snorted angrily, stuffed his notebook back in his breast pocket, and strutted off towards the upstairs smoking room and bar.
Pauli Winter saw Graf’s tiff with Esser from the dance floor. Pauli was transformed. No longer in the haircut that he’d had since entering cadet school, which had made his skull into a furry pink billiards ball, his blond hair was long enough to fall forward across his eyes. His new evening suit – from his father’s tailor – fitted close upon his stocky, muscular figure, and many female eyes watched him with interest as he waltzed with one of the Guggenheimer daughters. His student life had revealed a new aspect of Pauli, for he was a sociable young man who enjoyed parties, girls, drinks, and dancing more than lectures and books. On this account his first exam results had been so poor that he’d not yet told his father about them. Sometimes he wondered why he’d let his parents persuade him to go to university, but they had been determined to get him out of the Freikorps. They were hypocrites. They applauded the way the Freikorps fought the communists but deplored Graf and the men who did the fighting.
It was not easy to adapt to the schoolroom again after the violent rough-and-tumble of the Freikorps. But Peter was at the law school, too, and Peter sorted out all the problems in that rather imperious way that he did everything. But even Peter couldn’t help Pauli get better marks. Company Law was not something that interested Pauli