There is just enough time before departing for me to shower, have some tea, and listen to Beethoven’s Pastorale.
DECEMBER 1965
I loathe Christmas. It is not that I mind being with my family, but the rest of it is so commercialized, or else syrupy with contemptible Christian sentiments. Now if they could restore the vigor of the original Roman holiday. Perhaps I should speak to Himmler…. What am I saying? Never Himmler! Too bad Rosenberg isn’t around.
Helga, my eldest daughter, visited us for a week. She is a geneticist. Currently she is working on a paper to show the limitations of our eugenic policies, and to demonstrate the possibilities opened up by genetic engineering. All this is over my head. DNA, RNA, microbiology, and literal supermen in the end? When Hitler said to let the technical side move in any direction it chooses, he was not saying much. There seems no way to stop them.
There is an old man in the neighborhood who belongs to the Nordic cult, body and soul. He and I spoke last week, all the time watching youngsters ice skating under a startlingly blue afternoon sky. There was almost a fairy-tale-like quality about the scene, as this old fellow told me in no uncertain terms that this science business is so much fertilizer. “The only great scientist I’ve ever seen was Horbiger,” he announced proudly. “And he was more than a scientist. He was of the true blood, and held the true historical vision.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the way in which Horbiger was more than a scientist was in his mysticism. Horbiger was useful to us in his day, and one of Himmler’s prophets. But the man’s cosmogony was utterly discredited by our scientists. Speer’s technical Germany has a low tolerance for hoaxes.
This old man would hear none of it at any rate. He still believed every sacred pronouncement. “When I look up at the moon,” he told me in a confidential whisper, “I know what I am seeing.” Green cheese, I thought to myself, but I was aware of what was coming next.
“You still believe that the moon is made of ice?” I asked him.
“It is the truth,” he announced gravely, suddenly affronted as though my tone had given me away. “Horbiger proved it,” he said with finality.
Horbiger said it, I thought to myself. So that’s all you need for “proof.” I left the eccentric to his idle speculations on the meaning of the universe. I had to get back to one of my books. It had been languishing in the typewriter too long.
Frau Goebbels was in a sufficiently charitable mood come Christmas to invite the entire neighborhood over. I felt that I was about to live through another endless procession of representatives of the German nation—all the pomp of a funeral without any fun. The old eccentric was invited as well. I was just as happy that he did not come. Arguing about Horbiger is not my favorite pastime.
Speer and his wife dropped by. Mostly he wanted to talk about Von Braun and the moon project. Since we had put up the first satellite, the Americans were working around the clock to beat us to Luna and restore their international prestige. As far as I was concerned, propaganda would play the deciding role on world opinion (as always). This was an area in which America had always struck me as deficient.
I listened politely to Speer’s worries, and finally pointed out that the United States wouldn’t be in the position it currently held if so many of our rocketry people hadn’t defected at the end of the war. “It seems to be a race between their German scientists and ours,” I said with a hearty chuckle.
Speer did not seem amused. He replied with surprising coldness that Germany would be better off if we hadn’t lost so many of our Jewish geniuses when Hitler came to power. I swallowed hard on my bourbon, and perhaps Speer saw consternation on my face, because he was immediately trying to smooth things over with me. Speer is no idealist, but one hell of an expert in his field. I look upon him as I would a well-kept piece of machinery. I hope no harm ever comes to it.
Speer always seems to have up-to-date information on all sorts of interesting subjects. He had just learned that an investigation of many years had been dropped with regard to a missing German geneticist, Richard Dietrich. Since this famous scientist had vanished only a few years after the conclusion of the war, the authorities supposed he had either defected to the Americans in secret or had been kidnapped. After two decades of fruitless inquiry, a department decides to cut off funds for the search. I’m sure that a few detectives had made a lucrative career out of the job. Too bad for them.
Magda and I spent part of the holidays returning to my birthplace on the Rhineland. I like to see the old homestead from time to time. I’m happy it hasn’t been turned into a damned shrine as happened with Hitler’s childhood home. Looking at reminders of the past in a dry, flaky snowfall—brittle, yet seemingly endless, the same as time itself—I couldn’t help but wonder what the future holds. Space travel. Genetic engineering. Ah, I am an old man. I feel it in my bones.
MAY 1966
I have been invited to Burgundy. My son Helmuth has passed his initiation and is now a fully accredited student of the SS, on his way to joining the inner circle. Naturally he is in a celebratory mood and wants his father to witness the victory. I am proud, of course, but just a little wary of what his future holds in store. I remain the convinced ideologue, and critical of the bourgeois frame of mind. (Our revolution was against that sort of sentimentality.) But I don’t mind some bourgeois comforts. My son will live a hard and austere life that I hope will not prove too much for him.
No sooner had I been sent the invitation than I also received a telegram from my daughter Hilda, whom I had not seen since Yuletide, when she stopped by for Christmas dinner. Somehow she had learned of the invitation from Helmuth and insisted that I must see her before leaving on the trip. She told me that I was in danger! The message was clouded in mystery because she did not even offer a hint of a reason. Nevertheless I agreed to meet her at the proposed rendezvous because it was conveniently on the way. And I am always worried that Hilda will find herself in jail for going too far with her unrealistic views.
The same evening I was cleaning out a desk when I came across a letter Hilda had written when she was seventeen years old—from the summer of 1952. I had the urge to read it again:
Dear Father:
I appreciate your last letter and its frankness, although I don’t understand the point you made. Why have you not been able to think of anything to say to me for nearly a year? I know that you and Mother have found me to be your most difficult daughter. An example comes to mind: Helga, Holly, and Hedda never gave Mother trouble about their clothes. I didn’t object to the dresses she put on me, but could I help it if they were torn when I played? It simply seemed to me that more casual attire suited climbing trees and hiking and playing soccer.
From the earliest age I can remember, I’ve always thought boys had more fun than girls because they get to play all those wonderful games. I didn’t want to be left out! Why did that make Mother so upset that she cried?
Ever since Heide died in that automobile accident, Mother has become very protective of her daughters. Only Helmuth escaped that sort of overwhelming protectiveness, and that’s just because he’s a boy.
At first I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be sent to this private school, but a few weeks here convinced me that you had made the right decision. The mountains give you room to stretch your legs. The horses they let us have are magnificent. Wolfgang is mine and he is absolutely the fastest. I’m sure of it.