He looked at me steadily, turning the destroyed side of his face away from me as was his custom. A curious look had come into his normally rather dreamy eyes.
“There’s no such thing as an innocent civilian. This is war, not a game of croquet. The civilian behind the lines is every bit as much our enemy as the soldier in the trenches, and just as legitimate a target.”
“But that’s monstrous . . . The Hague Convention clearly lays down . . .” “To hell with the Hague Convention and all the rest of the laws imposed on us by the Latins and the Anglo-Saxons. This is a twentieth- century war we’re fighting, not one of Louis XIV’s little summer campaigns in Flanders where the ladies come out to watch the battle from a grandstand. And we’re not civilised fighters but Germanic warriors, descendants of the tribesmen who wiped out a Roman legion in the Teuto- berger Wald and then sacrificed every last survivor to their gods. I only wish that I could convince our suet-brained generals of that, what with their permitted targets and their laws of war. Just look at the way we handed Gorz over to the Wellischers: a whole town given to them intact ‘so as to spare it from further damage.’ I tell you, the German Army wouldn’t have stood for it: the Italians might have taken the site of Gorz, but not one stone would have been standing on another when they got there. Every house would have been blown up, every tree sawn down, every well poisoned and every cellar booby-trapped.”
“For heaven’s sake Potocznik, why are we fighting then? If we had to win the war by such means then frankly I’d rather we lost it a hundred times over.”
“And we will lose it too, I know that in my bones. There are too many against us already and the Americans are going to come in before long. But I promise you this, Germany will lose this war only to rise next time and win. That’s the war I’m planning for now, not this miserable abortion: the war when we’ll have got rid of the Kaisers and the Kraliczeks and the rest of the desk-warriors and be able to fight it according to our own rules.”
“Do you mean then that you’re fighting this war now without any hope of our winning?”
He smiled: the old, agreeable Potocznik smile. “Between ourselves, quite without any hope, my dear Prohaska. I realised back in the winter of 1914 when I was lying in hospital that Germany had already lost. The mistakes we made at the beginning were simply too great for us to overcome them. It may take us two years, perhaps even three to lose, but for the time being our enemies are too strong for us. The German High Command tries everything a little; flame-throwers, poison gas, U-Boats and so forth. But it always fails.”
“From my experience of poison gas, we deserve to lose for having used such filthy stuff.”
“The trouble, Prohaska, is not that we used such filthy stuff but that we used it half-heartedly. Just like aerial bombing: we do it too little, and piecemeal, without any sort of plan.” He leant across to stare into my eyes. “Personally I couldn’t give a hoot about poison gas, or about bombing hospitals or orphanages. In fact if it were left to me I’d aim for them specially, and use poison-gas bombs on cities too, if it did the job more efficiently. Terror is a weapon like any other, and civilians are as fit a target for it as anyone else. Only, if we’re going to use it, we must use it for maximum effect; not pinpricks with four or five aircraft against cities of a hundred thousand people, but raids with a hundred or even a thousand aircraft against towns of ten thousand people: arrive out of a blue sky and fly away five minutes later leaving the place a blazing cemetery. And leave them guessing which town will be on the menu for tomorrow. That’s war as I understand it: strike ruthlessly and hard, at random, without warning. If thine enemy offend thee—then go one night and blow his house up and cut the throats of his wife and children and poison his dog. That way he’ll leave you alone in future.”
I was silent for some time. I had always considered Potocznik to be slightly odd, a dreaming German poet-philosopher perhaps with some rather strange opinions, but at base a decent enough person. But now here he was preaching this murderous lunacy with the conviction of a dogmatic vegetarian or a convert to Christian Science. It was rather as if next door’s pedigree spaniel, always so playful and gentle, should suddenly appear in front of you with a crazed light in its eyes and a child’s torn-off arm dripping in its mouth. I suddenly understood Elisabeth’s remark (which I had previously taken to be flippant) about calling for help when he started questioning her about the shade of her nipples.
“I see,” I said, “so you are an enthusiast for long-range bombing after all. Are you planning to use it on a large scale in your second world war?” “Not in the least. I consider that strategic bombing may have some place in modern warfare, but not a major one except as a terror weapon.
Do it regularly, night after night, and the enemy will have time to build up defences and get used to it, like our famous preparatory barrages which last for weeks and merely serve to let the enemy move up his reserves in readiness. No, the sort of air power I’m interested in is completely different: massive and overwhelming air power, but used as close to the Front as possible in direct support of the armies—battlefield flying carried out by an air force specially designed for that purpose; fleets of aircraft in contact with the ground troops by wireless and used to smash any strong points ahead of an advance.”
“The wireless sets are going to be rather heavy for the ground troops to carry, don’t you think?”
“Not in my German army of the future. The British have been using armoured caterpillar tractors on the Ancre, I read in this week’s ‘Corps Intelligence Summary.’ Only the complacent idiots who write it are dismissing them as ‘mechanical toys of no lasting signficance.’ Not if I know anything about it they won’t be. That’s the war of the future: columns of armoured motor cars with wireless and with fleets of aeroplanes to call up as flying artillery. No more of your nine-day bombardments and twenty thousand lives to capture a square kilometre. We’ll win by speed and ruthlessness—and we’ll keep what we’ve conquered by the same means. It’s Latin, but it’s still a good motto: ‘Let them hate us so long as they fear us.’ ”
“Are you going to lead Germany in person in this war of yours, then?” “No, not me. Nor Ludendorff nor Kaiser Wilhelm nor the House of Hohenzollern. No: in ten, twenty, even thirty years a kaiser will arise from among the German people to lead us to our final victory. But I’ll tell you something: I think that he won’t be a German from the fat, complacent beer-swilling heart of Germany, but someone from the borderlands like myself, where we know what it really means to be a German.”
I returned to my tent that evening feeling rather depressed. Was the entire world going mad? Terror bombing and women’s nipple-colour and Volkskaisers—it was as if everyone had mild shell-shock now. As I reached the door of my tent I met Leutnant Szuborits, who had just been brought back by staff car. He had a bandaged hand, but otherwise seemed very pleased with himself. I congratulated him on his escape and asked how Zwierzkowski was doing. He smiled that fat, rather self-satisfied little smile of his.
“Oh, he’s fine. They took him to a civilian hospital in Trieste. I went in the ambulance with him to see him in. Here . . .” he rummaged in a paper bag, “here, I had a couple of hours to spare afterwards before they could get a car to bring me back here. I went into a music shop and found this. It was the last one in stock.”
The record gleamed black in the twilight. I looked at the label with sinking heart. It was Mizzi Gunther and Hubert Marischka singing the duet “Sport und immer Sport” from the operetta Endlich Allein by Franz Lehar.
11 THE SPIDER AND THE BLACK CAT