Hitler's peace

“What exactly does a philosopher do?” asked one of them. “If you don’t mind me asking.” The man tossed a packet of Kools onto the table and leaned back in his chair.

I picked up my coffee cup, went over to their table, and sat down. One of the other agents tamped his pipe with a biscuit-colored thumb and stared at me with dumb insolence.

“There are three kinds of questions in life,” I told the man. “There’s the how-does-fire-work kind of question.” I picked up one of his cigarettes, put a flame to it, snapped the lighter shut, and then shook the rest of his cigarettes onto the table. “Then there’s the how-many-cigarettes-do-you-have-left kind of question. Ten take away one equals nine, right? Most of the questions you can ask in life will fall into one of those two boxes. Empirical or formal.

“And the questions that don’t? They’re the philosophical ones. Like, ‘What is morality?’ Philosophy begins when you don’t know where to look for an answer. You say to yourself, What kind of question is this, and what kind of answer am I looking for? And is it possible that I might be able to slot this question into one of the other two boxes after all? That, my friend, is what a philosopher does.”

The three agents looked at one another with skeptical expressions and restrained smiles on their faces. But the Secret Service agent hadn’t finished quite yet with our oceangoing Socratic dialogue. “So what about morality?” he asked. “The morality of killing someone in wartime, for instance. Better still, the morality of killing Hitler. Morality tells you that murder is wrong, right? But suppose it was Hitler. And suppose you had the chance to kill Hitler and save thousands, perhaps millions of people.”

“You ask me, Stalin’s just as bad as Hitler,” said one of the other agents.

“Only, here’s the thing,” continued the man. “You’re not allowed to kill him with a pistol. You gotta do it with a blade, or maybe your bare hands. What do you do then, huh? I mean everything tells you to kill him, right? To kill him, no matter what.”

“You kill the son of a bitch,” said the third man.

“I’m trying to ask a philosophical question here,” insisted the first man.

“A philosopher can’t tell you what to do,” I told him. “He can only explain the issues and values that are involved. But in the end, it’s up to you to decide what’s right. Choices such as the one you describe can be difficult.”

“Then, with all due respect, sir,” said the agent, “philosophy doesn’t sound like it’s any damned use to anyone.”

“It won’t give you absolution. If that’s what you want, you need to see a priest. But for what it’s worth, if it was me and I had the chance to kill Hitler with a blade or my bare hands, hell, I’d do it.”

Utilitarianism, pure and simple? The greatest happiness of the greatest number? I almost managed to convince myself. But not them. And noticing their enduring skepticism, I changed the subject, asking them their names. The one who had asked me what philosophy was made the introductions. Blond, blue-eyed, with a small scar on one cheek, he looked like a member of a German dueling society.

“The guy with the pipe is Jim Qualter. My name is John Pawlikowski. And the tall one is Wally Rauff.”

I pricked up my ears as I heard that last name. Walter Rauff was also the name of the Gestapo commander in Milan. But the agent didn’t look like he’d have welcomed the information.

That same evening I found myself invited up to the captain’s cabin to play gin rummy with Hopkins, General Arnold, and the president. Outside the cabin, Agent Rauff sat on a chair reading Kurt Kruger’s I Was Hitler’s Doctor. He glanced up as I appeared and, without saying anything, reached over and opened the door.

The ship’s captain, a man named John L. McCrea, was FDR’s former naval aide and a good friend. He had turned over his own cabin to the president. A number of alterations had been made to suit the man in the wheelchair. An elevator had been installed so that FDR could move easily from one deck to another. Ramps had been built over the coaxials and other deck obstructions. A new bath had been installed, and the mirror lowered to enable the president to shave while he was in his chair.

Roosevelt’s valet, Arthur Prettyman, had brought a number of items to help make McCrea’s largish but Spartan cabin a presidential home away from home. Not the least of these were FDR’s favorite reclining chair and some china and silver from the White House. Later, Hopkins told me that Prettyman had also brought along the president’s deep-sea fishing gear and several Walt Disney movies, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, which was Roosevelt’s personal favorite.

A proper card table had been erected, and the president, wearing old trousers, a thick fishing shirt, and a hunting vest containing cigarettes and the long-stemmed matches he favored, was already shuffling the cards.