Hitler's peace

Gradually, the room came to order. Hogl, the detective superintendent guarding Hitler, was the first bodyguard to put away his gun. Then Vlasik, Stalin’s bodyguard, did the same. Pawlikowski, bleeding heavily from a wound in his back, was swiftly carried out of the room by Agents Qualter and Rauff.

I sat down on my chair and stared at the blood on my shirt sleeve. It was another few seconds before I realized that someone was standing immediately in front of me. I lifted my gaze, up from the polished black shoes and over the dark trousers, the plain brown military tunic and the white shirt and tie, to meet Hitler’s watery blue eyes. Instinctively, I stood up.

“Young man,” said Hitler, “I owe you my life.” And before I could say anything, he was shaking my hand and smiling broadly. “But for your prompt action, that man would surely have shot me.” As he spoke, the Fuhrer rose slightly on his toes, like a man for whom life suddenly had a new zest. “Yes, indeed. You saved my life. And judging from his behavior with the water glass, I think he had already failed to poison me, eh, Mr. President?”

Roosevelt nodded. “My deepest apologies to you, Herr Hitler,” he said, speaking German again. “It would appear you are right. That man meant to kill you, all right. For which I am deeply ashamed.”

Stalin was already adding his own apologies as host.

“Don’t mention it, gentlemen,” Hitler said, still holding me by the hand. “What is your name?” he asked me.

“Mayer, sir. Willard Mayer.”

Even as Hitler held my hand, I felt an understanding of what the Fuhrer and I were: two men for whom the entire spectrum of moral values had no real meaning, who had no real need of the humanities and the immaterial world. Here was the obvious extension of everything that I, as a logical positivist, believed in. Here was a man without values. And I suddenly perceived the bankruptcy of all my own intellectual endeavors. The meaninglessness of all the meanings I had striven to find. This was the truth of Hitler and all rigid materialism: it had absolutely nothing to do with being human.

“Thank you,” said Hitler, squeezing my hand in his own. “Thank you.”

“That’s all right, sir,” I said, smiling thinly.

At last the Fuhrer let go. It was Hopkins’s cue to suggest that this might be an appropriate opportunity to call a temporary halt to the proceedings. “I suggest that during our recess,” he said, “we examine those documents we have prepared supporting our respective negotiating positions. Willard?” He nodded at a file that lay on the table. “Would you hand that to the Fuhrer, please?”

I nodded numbly, and handed the file over to Hitler.

The three delegations now moved toward three of the room’s four doors. It was only now that I saw how the room had been constructed so that four delegations might enter the room from four separate entrances and, presumably, four separate dachas inside the Russian embassy compound.

“Wait a minute,” said Hopkins, as the American delegation neared the door that led back the same way they had come. “I’ve still got the American position papers. What was it that you gave the Fuhrer, Willard?”

“I don’t know. I think it must have been that Beketovka File,” I said.

“Then no harm done,” said Hopkins. “I expect Hitler’s seen it before. Still, it’s a lucky thing you didn’t give it to the Russians. Now that would have been embarrassing.”

1215 HOURS

Himmler was amazed that the peace talks still appeared to be on track. After the attempt on the Fuhrer’s life, he had assumed Hitler would insist on returning to Germany immediately. And indeed, he could hardly have blamed him. But you never could tell how the Fuhrer would react to an attempt on his life. In a way, of course, he had lived with the idea of assassination all his political life. As early as 1921, someone-Himmler had never found out who it was-had fired shots at Hitler in Munich during a rally at the Hofbrauhaus. Since then, there had been at least thirty other attempts, not including the trumped-up plots that the Gestapo dealt in. During a twelve-month period in 1933 and 1934 alone, there had been ten attempts on Hitler’s life. By any standard, the Fuhrer was a man possessed of the most astonishing luck. Usually, once the shock and anger had disappeared, Hitler managed to see an escape from death as nothing short of miraculous. It was a sign of divine intervention, and after thirty or more attempts, Himmler was half-inclined to agree.

Surviving an attempt on his life was the only time Hitler ever talked about God with any real conviction or enthusiasm, and it always affected both his oratory and his self-belief. It was a vicious circle, too: the more attempts to assassinate him Hitler survived, the stronger became his certainty that God had marked him out to make Germany great. And having convinced himself that this was the case, he more easily persuaded others to think the same way.