“Freiherr.”
Reiss realized that his secretary had entered the office. “I”m busy,” he said angrily. He slammed the book shut. “I’m trying to read this book, for God’s sake!”
It was hopeless. He knew it.
“Another coded radiogram is coming in from Berlin.” Pferdehuf said. “I caught a glimpse of it as they started decoding it. It deals with the political situation.”
“What did it say?” Reiss murmured, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and fingers.
“Doctor Goebbels has gone on the radio unexpectedly. A major speech.” The secretary was quite excited. “We’re supposed to take the text—they’re transmitting it out of code—and make sure it’s printed by the press, here.”
“Yes, yes,” Reiss said.
The moment his secretary had left once more. Reiss reopened the book. One more peek, despite my resolution. He thumbed the previous portion.
…in silence Karl contemplated the flag-draped casket. Here he lay, and now he was gone, really gone. Not even the demon-inspired powers could bring him back. The man—or was it after all Uebermensch?—whom Karl had blindly followed, worshiped… even to the brink of the grave. Adolf Hitler had passed beyond, but Karl clung to life. I will not follow him, Karl’s mind whispered. I will go on, alive. And rebuild. And we will all rebuild. We must.
How far, how terribly far, the Leader’s magic had carried him. And what was it, now that the last dot had been put on that incredible record, that journey from the isolated rustic town in Austria, up from rotting poverty in Vienna, from the nightmare ordeal of the trenches, through political intrigue, the founding of the Party, to the Chancellorship, to what for an instant had seemed near world domination?
Karl knew. Bluff. Adolf Hitler had lied to them. He had led them with empty words.
It is not too late. We see your bluff, Adolf Hitler. And we know you for what you are, at last. And the Nazi Party, the dreadful era of murder and megalomaniacal fantasy, for what it is. What it was.
Turning, Karl walked away from the silent casket…
Reiss shut the book and sat for a time. In spite of himself he was upset. More pressure should have been put on the Japs, he said to himself, to suppress this damn book. In fact, it’s obviously deliberate on their part. They could have arrested this—whatever his name is. Abendsen. They have plenty of power in the Middle West.
What upset him was this. The death of Adolf Hitler, the defeat and destruction of Hitler, the Partei, and Germany itself, as depicted in Abendsen’s book… it all was somehow grander, more in the old spirit than the actual world. The world of German hegemony.
How could that be? Reiss asked himself. Is it just this man’s writing ability?
They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that’s how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed—all he’s got to do is thump on the drum, and there’s his response. And he laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets.
Look how he played on my sentiments, Herr Reiss reflected, not on my intellect; and naturally he’s going to get paid for it—the money’s there. Obviously somebody put the Hundsfott up to it, instructed him what to write. They’ll write anything if they know they’ll get paid. Tell any bunch of lies, and then the public actually takes the smelly brew seriously when its dished out. Where was this published? Herr Reiss inspected the copy of the book. Omaha, Nebraska. Last outpost of the former plutocratic U.S. publishing industry, once located in downtown New York and supported by Jewish and Communist gold.