By the look on Roosevelt’s face, it was clear to Hopkins that this was the first the President had learned of this.
“Is that a fact? I must admit I did not know that.”
“Yes, Mr. President, so infiltrating the Italian military was very simple and the big weakness of the Germans is that they are forced to share at least some of their intelligence with the Italians, and the Italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, is Mussolini’s son-in-law, so the Germans are forced to tell Ciano more than discretion suggests is wise. So, the weak link is the Italians.”
“Fucking Wops, and they almost cost me Chicago,” the President muttered a little too loudly.
Brandeis was startled, but continued.
“So, here is a three-page summary that I got today from the Swiss embassy, it was in the diplomatic pouch. I have briefed Mr. Hopkins on the contents earlier this afternoon.”
“OK, so what is it?” the President said, becoming irritated at the clear but lawyerly description.
“I have translated the document from German for you; as you know Mr. Hopkins reads and speaks fluent German and I went to school in Germany.”
Hopkins spoke,
“Essentially, Mr. President, this document, if true—and like Mr. Brandeis, I believe the veracity of this document—this document makes three points.”
“First, that the burning of the synagogues on the so-called Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass was seen by the late German leader as a huge mistake—a public relations disaster; he correctly predicted the world’s reaction. Dr. Goebbels was almost dismissed. Second, that Hess’s flight was very carefully planned by Hess, Hitler and Goebbels. And third, relating to the second point, the Germans are eager for peace with England, and the Germans have no professed interest in the British Empire, the Royal Navy, or the British Isles themselves.”
Roosevelt leant back and puffed his cigar, “Fuck,” was all he said.
“Mr. President, you can see why I thought I should bother you and Mr. Hopkins on such a vile night.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“But I don’t get it—if the Hess flight was not the ‘madman-in-a-Messerschmitt,’ why portray it as such? Why not simply come out and state it?”
Hopkins fielded this loose ball, “Well, the Germans are in a bind—they had to come up with this pipe dream for precisely the reason why it has been rejected by the British—they would seem weak even before their June invasion of the Soviet Union.”
“OK, but if this is the case, why the hell don’t the British settle?”
Brandeis and Hopkins looked at each other; neither spoke. Then Hopkins said one word, “Churchill.”
Until now, Roosevelt had kept his professional politician’s masque on, but the brandy was starting to work its effect.
“That pompous asshole thinks his shit doesn’t stink.”
Brandeis ignored this and went on, “In the Jewish community, there are two opposing views of how to deal with the current situation: the majority view is that the Germans need be defeated and actually destroyed—that Germany needs to be turned into farmland. The minority view is that the re-creation of a Jewish state is a better idea. As you know (all lawyers say this when the listener does not know), this is called Zionism. I am an adamant proponent of the second view. Actually, I am prominent in the American Zionist movement, and I believe this to be a better solution because it requires less bloodshed and frankly central Europe is Germany’s backyard, and the crazy and brittle monstrosities of Versailles, such as Czecho-Slovakia, made no sense in the real world. These checkerboard so-called countries only exist solely to hem in the Germans.”
Roosevelt professionally hated Brandeis as the main opponent to the glories of Roosevelt’s New Deal, but at a personal level Brandeis was impossible not to like: modest, polite, well-educated and intelligent.
Although addicted to lucky numbers, and lucky shoes, and lucky hats, Roosevelt was not unintelligent. He thanked the elderly Justice.
Brandeis slowly rose and left the room.
Roosevelt looked at Hopkins and said, “Interesting.”
15: Milch’s Boffins
Saturday, 15 November 1941
As the light snow fell silently on the stone terrace of Haus Wachenfeld, Jodl explained to the assembled group how the new Brest-Litovsk-Kiev-Crimea line was succeeding better than expected. To create a complete break with the Berlin brawlers and thugs, Milch had rather wisely suggested that the late Chancellor’s mountain house made an ideal command post,
“With today’s advanced wireless telephony, this is the ideal place, or would you prefer the mosquitos of Rastenburg in summer and the 20 degrees of frost of winter?”
Jodl had simply smiled at this question, remembering the marshy, malaria-infested hell hole in East Prussia.
To the group of Field Marshals, Jodl explained,
“I can tell you the mercury is reading 20 degrees of frost in Leningrad according to our Finnish friends. But, it is actually very hot in Moscow.”
Gerd von Rundstedt looked up, surprised.
“Yes, it is a sweltering 17 degrees of frost in Moscow.”
The room exploded in laughter.
Rundstedt said, “Terrible shame about the September crash.”
It looked like Kurt Student was going to choke to death laughing.
Loeb said, “Careful, Rundstedt, you’re going to kill Student if you’re not careful.”
Jodl smiled and said, “Time for dinner gentlemen, and I understand it is wild turkey and pig’s trotters. Well, it should be, as I ordered the dinner for this evening.”
Since the events of the 1st of September, Jodl had implemented Milch’s suggestion, installing the centralized command of the wide-spread front at the mountain house. And he had ensured all vestiges of the former owner were removed: the complete staff was replaced; Eva had moved back in with her sister, and her room had been repainted; and the vegetarian’s greenhouse had been replaced with a concrete pad for howitzers (and thus, Fatso’s bones were permanently interred, or as Jodl once joked ‘interned’). Cigar smoke wafted through the mountain house and meats of all kinds were the standing order for all meals.
Standing alone in front of the fire, Albert absentmindedly gazed at the orange of the flames. He now realized how the country was so lucky to have men like Jodl and Milch in charge: sober, modest, and above all, professional. He wondered were the past few years just a horrible cruel nightmare? And the elimination of the bitter, hateful Austrian bile that all Austrians seemed to be poisoned with—the blind malevolence they spat was as bad as the Slavs’ centuries of pogroms and the Soviets’ mass execution of millions of their citizens.
As Albert thought about Jodl and Milch, his thoughts turned to Professor Stein and Stein’s comments about Germany, and how its strength—its backbone—was its private companies, based on Stein’s emphatic statistics of a professional economist: how German companies averaged 140 employees, while southern Europe’s average was just ten employees, and Stein’s always-prescient insight of how this radically affected the calibration of the political order of the day—the stable, professional and educated middle class versus the hard-scrabble petty prejudices of marginal corner shop owners.
Then Albert recalled Julius’s initially odd comment about German private companies’ fear of debt. Albert had checked for himself and found his mentor to be completely and entirely correct—it was true that private German companies disliked—almost feared—debt. And how this caused them to lose three percent in growth each year, but, at the same time, these modest private German companies were the most stable in the world, and many were over one hundred years old.