The Invisible Victory

I gingerly sipped the first martini of my life. 'How's Gerda Dieffenbach?' I had been wanting to ask since entering the room.

'I saw her last year. She's fine, it seems. Still a schoolmistress. I kept clear, that game has become too dangerous. But I was sick, and I called in Dr Dieffenbach. He's disillusioned with the Nazis, I guess. He thought they'd bolster the middle classes. But Hitler isn't interested in the middle classes or any classes.' Hitler was interested only in race and blood, valour and fecundity, warfare and slavery, torture and death. 'Their boy's gone to join the Army.'

'Did Professor Domagk's daughter's arm recover?' It was like talking about ghosts.

'Oh, sure. They didn't have to operate, or anything. We saw the start of big deal, old man. I've started up a pharmaceutical company in New York State, we're making this new one, sulphapyridine against pneumonia.'

I nodded. 'The disease which used to be called "the old man's friend", but more frequently robbed him of his healthy grandson.'

Jeff topped up my glass from the shaker. I decided definitely to give up sherry.

'That guy you used to talk about, Professor Hцrlein-'

'He's been to England a couple of times. He was lecturing to doctors about Domagk and his mice.'

'He's going great guns in Wuppertal. He's a member of the Nazi party, he's mixed up with the Reich Labour Front and the Reich Health Council, as well as being on the I G Farben board of directors. A big bug in the present order of things.'

'Do you think there'll be a war?' People were asking that as they used to speculate politely about the weather.

Jeff looked hard under his bar of eyebrow. 'Hitler wants his war, and Hitler's going to win it.' I could say nothing in face of this chilling opinion. Jeff flicked up a Chesterfield. 'There's only one man in the world who can stop him.'

'Roosevelt?'

'Me.'

I stared in silence through the large window at the Thames, chocolate coloured with its spectrum of oil, a string of barges heading downstream behind a tug billowing black smoke. Jeff seemed wholly serious. I wondered whether his mind had become unhinged under the pressure of business in two continents.

'Let's take a short walk,' he added, almost equally surprisingly. 'I've got my secretary Donna over here, she's out shopping at Harrods but she'll be back, and I don't want her to know a word about this. The slightest whisper to a woman, you might as well say it on the radio.'

We took the lift down in silence. Leaving by the river entrance of the hotel, we strolled in the small, delightful triangular public gardens. It was a fine evening, the red double-decker trams clanking along the Embankment, bearing the office workers home to Camberwell and Brixton. 'You know Gцring's been in London?' Jeff asked abruptly.

'I heard a rumour, but I didn't believe it.'

'He was here less than twenty-four hours. It was on May II, 1937, the day before your King George's Coronation. He just showed up at Croydon with a few other Nazis. Wanted to get into the Royal act, I guess, maybe wave to the crowds from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Ribbentrop was mad. Hitler already had an official representative for the ceremony, General Blomberg. Gцring spent the night at the embassy in Carlton House Terrace, then they smuggled the Reichmarschall out. The crowds in the streets would have had him for dog meat.'

'What's this got to do with you stopping the war?'

'I told you about Gцring so you'd know a lot of things go on across the frontiers which never see newsprint. Have you heard of General Franz Halder?'

'There're too many German generals to keep count.'

'He's Hitler's Chief of Staff, and I guess busy this moment with his pencil and a map of the county of Kent, planning the best way up from Dover. Say, who's this?'

He had paused at a bust among the shrubs. 'Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan.'

'Oh, sure-' Jeff whistled a phrase from _The Mikado._ 'Do you remember what I told you during that crazy show in Cologne? How the generals hated Hitler as a Johnnie-come-lately? They reckon he's more likely to lead Germany to ruin than to glory. Halder would be very, very pleased to see the end of the Fьhrer. So would Count von Moltke, great-grandnephew of the famous one. Also von Trott, von Schlabrendorff and Carl Gцrdeler, who was over here last year with his wife, ostensibly giving lectures but making contact with Horace Wilson at the Foreign Office. Do you know what's happening in London on July 18?'

'I haven't the faintest.'

'It's the International Whaling Conference.'

Jeff stopped to inspect the memorial to the Imperial Camel Corps. I had no idea where this strange conversation was leading. But he seemed to be handling important German names with assurance. I wondered how the International Whaling Conference came into it.

'The German delegation will be headed by a guy called Wohltat. He's a civil servant, from the Economics Ministry. He's close to Gцring. And he's interested in bigger fish than whales. He's coming to do a deal with Wilson. Colonies, cash for Germany-a thousand million pounds. A free hand to act as they like in eastern Europe. In return, Hitler will guarantee the British Empire. Halder could tear up his map of Kent.'

'Those are terms which Britain would never accept.'

'They are terms which Britain herself suggested. Through Horace Wilson.'

'I simply don't believe you,' I said forcefully.

'Have it your own way,' Jeff told me airily. 'But those terms could be a starting point. This is my plan. If your Foreign Office told Halder they'd stick to that sort of agreement once the generals had kicked out Hitler…that they'd support the generals against the Nazi machine right up to the hilt…that they'd support Gцrdeler as the new Chancellor, which seems the fashionable idea…then we'd be getting somewhere.'

'The Germans would murder the rebellious generals.'

'Not for one moment. Listen-the German people have been living for the glorious tomorrow since Hitler first walked into the Chancellery. Maybe the tomorrow's getting nearer, they feel they can almost touch it. But they absolutely hate the idea of another war. And so do the generals. For the same good reason. They're afraid they might lose again. I'm going on to Germany in two-three days. I've got a contact with Halder right there in Wuppertal. It's essential I meet someone from your Foreign Office. Maybe you can arrange it through Sir Edward Tiplady? In six months, we could have Hitler in Heaven or St Helena.'

Jeff paused, lighting another cigarette. I did not know what to make of it all. Jeff was not a vain man, he did not seek importance, he did not exaggerate. He was practical, a man who would set about making a million dollars or restoring peace in the world without fuss or self-delusions. And in the six years I had known him, everything he had foreseen in Germany had come sickeningly true.

'I suppose I could try Sir Edward, or Lord Meddish, who I share a flat with. But in the present temper of the country nobody wants to smell even faintly of appeasement.'

'It wouldn't be appeasement, if the end result was Hitler's head on a spike.'

'I'll see what I can do,' I promised.

'But hurry, old man. Time's short.'

Going up in the lift, Jeff talked about Wuppertal. 'Living's tough in Germany today. Everything ersatz, coffee from acorns, margarine for butter, a stick of rhubarb pretending to be a lemon. Their clothes are made from Zellwolle substitute, their rubber from God knows what. The Germans are worse off than during the War.'

'Don't they object?'

'Under the Nazis? You must be crazy. There's some sickening things happening behind barbed wire which even the Nazis are ashamed of; because they keep quiet about it.' We reached his floor. 'You know Hitler has to wear reading glasses?' Jeff added. 'He's never allowed to be seen or photographed in them. It would spoil the superman image. He has his speeches typed in special extra-large Fьhrerschrift.'_