ARYANS AND ABSINTHE

 

 

Today it takes 40,000 marks to buy a single US dollar.

—Volkischer Beobachter, May 4, 1923

 

 

Ernst Drexler found the strangest things entertaining. That was how he always phrased it: entertaining. Even inflation could be entertaining, he said.

Karl Stehr remembered seeing Ernst around the Berlin art venues for months before he actually met him. He stood out in that perennially scruffy crowd with his neatly pressed suit and vest, starched collar and tie, soft hat either on his head or under his arm, and his distinctive silver-headed cane wrapped in black rhinoceros hide. His black hair swept back sleek as linoleum from his high forehead; the bright blue eyes that framed his aquiline nose were never still, always darting about under his dark eyebrows; thin lips, a strong chin, and tanned skin, even in winter, completed the picture. Karl guessed Ernst to be in his mid-thirties, but his mien was that of someone older.

For weeks at a time he would seem to be everywhere, and never at a loss for something to say. At the Paul Klee show where Klee’s latest, “The Twittering Machine,” had been on exhibition, Karl had overheard his sarcastic comment that Klee had joined the Bauhaus not a moment too soon. Ernst was always at the right places: at the opening of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, at the cast party for that Czech play R.U.R., and at the secret screenings of Murnau’s Nosferatu, to name just a few.

And then he’d be nowhere. He’d disappear for weeks or a month without a word to anyone. When he returned he would pick up just where he’d left off, as if there’d been no hiatus. And when he was in town he all but lived at the Romanisches Cafe where nightly he would wander among the tables, glass in hand, a meandering focus of raillery and bavardage, dropping dry, witty, acerbic comments on art and literature like ripe fruit. No one seemed to remember who first introduced him to the cafe. He more or less insinuated himself into the regulars on his own. After a while it seemed he had always been there. Everyone knew Ernst but no one knew him well. His persona was a strange mixture of accessibility and aloofness that Karl found intriguing.

They began their friendship on a cool Saturday evening in the spring. Karl had closed his bookshop early and wandered down Budapesterstrasse to the Romanisches. It occupied the corner at Tauentzien across from the Gedachtniskirche: large for a cafe, with a roomy sidewalk area and a spacious interior for use on inclement days and during the colder seasons.

Karl had situated himself under the awning, his knickered legs resting on the empty chair next to him; he sipped an aperitif among the blossoming flower boxes as he reread Siddhartha. At the sound of clacking high heels he’d glance up and watch the “new look” women as they trooped past in pairs and trios with their clinging dresses fluttering about their knees and their smooth tight caps pulled down over their bobbed hair, their red lips, mascaraed eyes, and coats trimmed in fluffy fur snuggled around their necks.

Karl loved Berlin. He’d been infatuated with the city since his first sight of it when his father had brought him here before the war; two years ago, on his twentieth birthday, he’d dropped out of the university to carry on an extended affair with her. His lover was the center of the art world, of the new freedoms. You could be what you wanted here: a free thinker, a free lover, a communist, even a fascist; men could dress like women and women could dress like men. No limits. All the new movements in music, the arts, the cinema, and the theater had their roots here. Every time he turned around he found a new marvel.

Night was upon Karl’s mistress when Ernst Drexler stopped by the table and introduced himself.

“We’ve not formally met,” he said, thrusting out his hand. “Your name is Stehr, I believe. Come join me at my table. There are a number of things I wish to discuss with you.”

Karl wondered what things this man more than ten years his senior could wish to discuss, but since he had no other plans for the evening, he went along.

The usual crowd was in attendance at the Romanisches that night. Lately it had become the purlieu of Berlin bohemia—all the artists, writers, journalists, critics, composers, editors, directors, scripters, and anyone else who had anything to do with the avant garde of German arts, plus the girlfriends, the boyfriends, the mere hangers-on. Some sat rooted in place, others roved ceaselessly from table to table. Smoke undulated in a muslin layer above a gallimaufry of scraggly beards, stringy manes, bobbed hair framing black-rimmed eyes, homburgs, berets, monocles, pince-nez, foot-long cigarette holders, baggy sweaters, dark stockings, period attire ranging from the Hellenic to the pre-Raphaelite.

“I saw you at Siegfried the other night,” Ernst said as they reached his table in a dim rear corner, out of the peristaltic flow. Ernst took the seat against the wall where he could watch the room; he left the other for Karl. “What do you think of Lang’s latest?”

“Very Germanic,” Karl said as he took his seat and reluctantly turned his back to the room. He was a people watcher.

Ernst laughed. “How diplomatic! But how true. Deceit, betrayal, and backstabbing—in both the figurative and literal sense. Germanic indeed. Hardly Neue Sachlichkeit, though.”

“I think New Realism was the furthest thing from Lang’s mind. Now, Die Strasse, on the other hand—”

“Neue Sachlichkeit will soon join Expressionism in the mausoleum of movements. And good riddance. It is shit.”

“Kunst ist Scheisse?” Karl said, smiling. “Dada is the deadest of them all.”

Ernst laughed again. “My, you are sharp, Karl. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. You’re very bright. You’re one of the few people in this room who will be able to appreciate my new entertainment.”

“Really? And what is that?”

“Inflation.”

Before Karl could ask what he meant, Ernst flagged down a passing waiter.

“The usual for me, Freddy, and—?” He pointed to Karl, who ordered a schnapps.

“Inflation? Never heard of it. A new card game?”

Ernst smiled. “No, no. It’s played with money.”

“Of course. But how—”

“It’s played with real money in the real world. It’s quite entertaining. I’ve been playing it since the New Year.”

Freddy soon delivered Karl’s schnapps. For Ernst he brought an empty stemmed glass, a sweaty carafe of chilled water, and a small bowl of sugar cubes. Karl watched fascinated as Ernst pulled a silver flask from his breast pocket and unscrewed the top. He poured three fingers of clear green liquid into the glass, then returned the flask to his coat. Next he produced a slotted spoon, placed a sugar cube in its bowl, and held it over the glass. Then he dribbled water from the carafe, letting it flow over the cube and into the glass to mix with the green liquid…which began to turn a pale yellow.

“Absinthe!” Karl whispered.

“Quite. I developed a taste for it before the war. Too bad it’s illegal now—although it’s still easily come by.”

Now Karl knew why Ernst frequently reserved this out-of-the-way table. Instinctively he glanced around, but no one was watching.

Ernst sipped and smacked his lips. “Ever tried any?”

“No.”

Karl had never had the opportunity. And besides, he’d heard that it drove you mad.

Ernst slid his glass across the table. “Take a sip.”

Part of Karl urged him to say no, while another pushed his hand forward and wound his fingers around the stem of the glass. He lifted it to his lips and took a tiny sip.

The bitterness rocked his head back and puckered his cheeks.

“That’s the wormwood,” Ernst said, retrieving his glass. “Takes some getting used to.”

Karl shuddered as he swallowed. “How did that ever become a craze?”

“For half a century, all across the continent, the cocktail hour was known as l’heure verte after this little concoction.” He sipped again, closed his eyes, savoring. “At the proper time, in the proper place, it can be…revelatory.”

After a moment, he opened his eyes and motioned Karl closer.

“Here. Move over this way and sit by me. I wish to show you something.”

Karl slid his chair around to where they both sat facing the crowded main room of the Romanisches.

Ernst waved his arm. “Look at them, Karl. The cream of the city’s artists attended by their cachinating claques and coteries of epigones and acolytes, mixing with the city’s lowlifes and lunatics. Morphine addicts and vegetarians cheek by jowl with Bolsheviks and boulevardiers, arrivistes and anarchists, abortionists and antivivisectionists, directors and dilettantes, doyennes and demimondaines.”

Karl wondered how much time Ernst spent here sipping his absinthe and observing the scene. And why. He sounded like an entomologist studying a particularly interesting anthill.

“Everyone wants to join the parade. They operate under the self-induced delusion that they’re in control: ‘What happens in the Berlin arts today, the rest of the world copies next week.’ True enough, perhaps. But this is the Masque of the Red Death, Karl. Huge forces are at play around them, and they are certain to get crushed as the game unfolds. Germany is falling apart—the impossible war reparations are suffocating us, the French and Belgians have been camped in the Ruhr Valley since January, the communists are trying to take over the north, the right-wingers and monarchists practically own Bavaria, and the Reichsbank’s answer to the economic problems is to print more money.”

“Is that bad?”

“Of course. It’s only paper. It’s been sending prices through the roof.”

He withdrew his wallet from his breast pocket, pulled a bill from it, and passed it to Karl.

Karl recognized it. “An American dollar.”

Ernst nodded. “‘Good as gold,’ as they say. I bought it for ten thousand marks in January. Care to guess what the local bank was paying for it today?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps…”

“Forty thousand. Forty thousand marks.”

Karl was impressed. “You quadrupled your money in four months.”

“No, Karl,” Ernst said with a wry smile. “I’ve merely quadrupled the number of marks I control. My buying power is exactly what it was in January. But I’m one of the very few people in this storm-tossed land who can say so.”

“Maybe I should try that,” Karl said softly, admiring the elegant simplicity of the plan. “Take my savings and convert it to American dollars.”

“By all means do. Clean out your bank account, pull every mark you own out from under your mattress and put them into dollars. But that’s mere survival—hardly entertainment.”

“Survival sounds good enough.”

“No, my friend. Survival is never enough. Animals limit their concerns to mere survival; humans seek entertainment. That is why we must find a way to make inflation entertaining. Inflation is here. There’s nothing we can do about it. So let’s have some fun with it.”

“I don’t know…”

“Do you own a house?”

“Yes,” Karl said slowly, cautiously. He didn’t know where this was leading. “And no.”

“Really. You mean it’s mortgaged to the hilt?”

“No. Actually it’s my mother’s. A small estate north of the city near Bernau. But I manage it for her.”

Father had died a colonel in the Argonne and he’d left it to her. But Mother had no head for money, and she hadn’t been quite herself in the five years since Father’s death. So Karl took care of the lands and the accounts, but spent most of his time in Berlin. His bookstore barely broke even, but he hadn’t opened it for profit. He’d made it a place where local writers and artists were welcome to stop and browse and meet; he reserved a small area in the rear of the store where they could sit and talk and sip the coffee he kept hot for them. His dream was that someday one of the poor unknowns who partook of his hospitality would become famous and perhaps remember the place kindly—and perhaps someday stop by to say hello with Thomas Mann or the reclusive Herman Hesse in tow. Until then Karl would be quite satisfied with providing coffee and rolls to starving scribblers.

But even from the beginning, the shop had paid nonpecuniary dividends. It was his entrée to the literati, and from there to the entire artistic caravan that swirled through Berlin.

“Any danger of losing it?”

“No.” The estate produced enough so that, along with Father’s army pension, his mother could live comfortably.

“Good. Then mortgage it. Borrow to the hilt on it, and then borrow some more. Then turn all those marks into US dollars.”

Karl was struck dumb by the idea. The family home had never had a lien on it. Never. The idea was unthinkable.

“No. I—I couldn’t.”

Ernst put his arm around Karl’s shoulder and leaned closer. Karl could smell the absinthe on his breath.

“Do it, Karl. Trust me in this. It’s an entertainment, but you’ll see some practical benefits as well. Mark my words, six months from now you’ll be able to pay off your entire mortgage with a single US dollar. A single coin.”

“I don’t know…”

“You must. I need someone who’ll play the game with me. It’s much more entertaining when you have someone to share the fun with.”

Ernst straightened up and lifted his glass.

“A toast!” He clinked his glass against Karl’s. “By the way, do you know where glass clinking originated? Back in the old days, when poisoning a rival was a fad among the upper classes, it became the practice to allow your companion to pour some of his drink into your cup, and vice versa. That way, if one of the drinks were poisoned, you’d both suffer.”

“How charming.”

“Quite. Inevitably the pouring would be accompanied by the clink of one container against another. Hence, the modern custom.” Once again he clinked his absinthe against Karl’s schnapps. “Trust me, Karl. Inflation can be very entertaining—and profitable as well. I expect the mark to lose fully half its value in the next six weeks. So don’t delay.”

He raised his glass. “To inflation!” he cried and drained the absinthe.

Karl sipped his schnapps in silence.

Ernst rose from his seat. “I expect to see you dollar rich and mark poor when I return.”

“Where are you going?”

“A little trip I take every so often. I like to swing up through Saxony and Thuringia to see what the local Bolsheviks are up to—I have a membership in the German Communist Party, you know. I subscribe to Rote Fahne, listen to speeches by the Zentrale, and go to rallies. It’s very entertaining. But after I tire of that—Marxist rhetoric can be so boring—I head south to Munich to see what the other end of the political spectrum is doing. I’m also a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party down there and subscribe to their Volkischer Beobachter.”

“Never heard of them. How can they call themselves ‘National’ if they’re not nationally known?”

“Just as they can call themselves Socialists when they are stridently fascist. Although frankly I, for one, have difficulty discerning much difference between either end of the spectrum—they are distinguishable only by their paraphernalia and their rhetoric. The National Socialists—they call themselves Nazis—are a power in Munich and other parts of Bavaria, but no one pays too much attention to them up here. I must take you down there sometime to listen to one of their leaders. Herr Hitler is quite a personality. I’m sure our friend Freud would love to get him on the couch.”

“Hitler? Never heard of him, either.”

“You really should hear him speak sometime. Very entertaining.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Today it takes 51,000 marks to buy a single US dollar.

—Volkischer Beobachter, May 21, 1923

 

A few weeks later, when Karl returned from the bank with the mortgage papers for his mother to sign, he spied something on the door post. He stopped and looked closer.

A mezuzah.

He took out his pocket knife and pried it off the wood, then went inside.

“Mother, what is this?” he said, dropping the object on the kitchen table.

She looked up at him with her large, brown, intelligent eyes. Her brunette hair was streaked with gray. She’d lost considerable weight immediately after Father’s death and had never regained it. She used to be lively and happy, with an easy smile that dimpled her high-colored cheeks. Now she was quiet and pale. She seemed to have shrunken, in body and spirit.

“You know very well what it is, Karl.”

“Yes, but haven’t I warned you about putting it outside?”

“It belongs outside.”

“Not in these times. Please, Mother. It’s not healthy.”

“You should be proud of being Jewish.”

“I’m not Jewish.”

They’d had this discussion hundreds of times lately, it seemed, but Mother just didn’t want to understand. His father, the colonel, had been Christian, his mother Jewish. Karl had decided to be neither. He was an atheist, a skeptic, a free-thinker, an intellectual. He was German by language and by place of birth, but he preferred to think of himself as an international man. Countries and national boundaries should be abolished, and someday soon would be.

“If your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish. You can’t escape that. I’m not afraid to tell the world I’m Jewish. I wasn’t so observant when your father was alive, but now that he’s gone…”

Her eyes filled with tears.

Karl sat down next to her and took her hands in his.

“Mother, listen. There’s a lot of anti-Jewish feeling out there these days. It will die down, I’m sure, but right now we live in an inordinately proud country that lost a war and wants to blame someone. Some of the most bitter people have chosen Jews as their scapegoats. So until the country gets back on an even keel, I think it’s prudent to keep a low profile.”

Her smile was wan. “You know best, dear.”

“Good.” He opened the folder he’d brought from the bank. “And now for some paperwork. These are the final mortgage papers, ready for signing.”

Mother squeezed his hands. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”

“Absolutely sure.”

Actually, now that the final papers were ready, he was having second thoughts.

Karl had arranged to borrow every last pfennig the bank would lend him against his mother’s estate. He remembered how uneasy he’d been at the covetous gleam in the bank officers’ eyes when he’d signed the papers. They sensed financial reverses, gambling debts, perhaps, a desperate need for cash that would inevitably lead to default and subsequent foreclosure on a prime piece of property. The bank president’s eyes had twinkled over his reading glasses; he’d all but rubbed his hands in anticipation.

Doubt and fear gripped Karl now as his mother’s pen hovered over the signature line. Was he being a fool? He was a bookseller and they were financiers. Who was he to presume to know more than men who spent every day dealing with money? He was acting on a whim, spurred on by a man he hardly knew.

But he steeled himself, remembering the research he’d done. He’d always been good at research. He knew how to ferret out information. He’d learned that Rudolf Haverstein, the Reichsbank’s president, had increased his orders of currency paper and was running the printing presses at full speed on overtime.

He watched in silence as his mother signed the mortgage papers.

He’d already taken out personal loans, using Mother’s jewelry as collateral. Counting the mortgage, he’d now accumulated 500 million marks. If he converted them immediately, he’d get 9,800 US dollars at today’s exchange rate. Ninety-eight hundred dollars for half a billion marks. It seemed absurd. He wondered who was madder—the Reichsbank or himself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Today it takes 500,000,000 marks to buy a single US dollar.

—Volkischer Beobachter, September 1, 1923

 

 

“To runaway inflation,” Ernst Drexler said, clinking his glass of cloudy yellow against Karl’s clear glass of schnapps.

Karl sipped a little of his drink and said nothing. He and Ernst had retreated from the heat and glare of the late summer sun on the Romanisches Cafe’s sidewalk to the cooler, darker interior.

Noon on a Saturday and the Romanisches was nearly empty. But then, who could afford to eat out these days?

Only thieves and currency speculators.

Four months ago Karl hadn’t believed it possible, but for a while they had indeed had fun with inflation.

Now it was getting scary.

Less than four months after borrowing half a billion marks, his 9,800 US dollars were worth almost five trillion marks. Five trillion. The number was meaningless. He could barely imagine even a billion marks, and he controlled five thousand times that amount.

“I realized today,” Karl said softly, “that I can pay off all of my half-billion-mark debt with a single dollar bill.”

“Don’t do it,” Ernst said quickly.

“Why not? I’d like to be debt free.”

“You will be. Just wait.”

“Until when?”

“It won’t be long before the exchange rate will be billions of marks to the dollar. Won’t it be so much more entertaining to pay off the bankers with a single American coin?”

Karl stared at his glass. This game was no longer “entertaining.” People had lost all faith in the mark. And with good reason. Its value was plummeting. In a mere thirty days it had plunged from a million to the dollar to half a billion to the dollar. Numbers crowded the borders of the notes, ever-lengthening strings of ever more meaningless zeros. Despite running twenty-four hours a day, the Reichsbank presses could not keep up with the demand. Million-mark notes were now being over-stamped with TEN MILLION in large black letters. Workers had gone from getting paid twice a month to weekly, and now to daily. Some were demanding twice-daily pay so that they could run out on their lunch hour and spend their earnings before they lost their value.

“I’m frightened, Ernst.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve insulated yourself. You’ve got nothing to fear.”

“I’m frightened for our friends and neighbors. For Germany.”

“Oh, that.”

Karl didn’t understand how Ernst could be so cavalier about the misery steadily welling up around them like a rain-engorged river. It oppressed Karl. He felt guilty, almost ashamed of being safe and secure on his high ground of foreign currency. Ernst drained his absinthe and rose, his eyes bright.

“Let’s go for a walk, shall we? Let’s see what your friends and neighbors are up to on this fine day.”

Karl left his schnapps and followed him out into the street. They strolled along Budapesterstrasse until they came upon a bakery.

“Look,” Ernst said, pointing with his black cane. “A social gathering.”

Karl bristled at the sarcasm. The long line of drawn faces with anxious, hollow eyes—male, female, young, old—trailing out the door and along the sidewalk was hardly a social gathering. Lines for bread, meat, milk, any of the staples of life, had become so commonplace that they were taken for granted. The customers stood there with their paper bags, cloth sacks, and wicker baskets full of marks, shifting from one foot to the other, edging forward, staying close behind the person in front of them lest someone tried to cut into the line, constantly turning the count of their marks in their minds, hoping they’d find something left to buy when they reached the purchase counter, praying their money would not devalue too much before the price was rung up.

Karl had never stood in such a line. He didn’t have to. He needed only to call or send a note to a butcher or baker listing what he required and saying that he would be paying with American currency. Within minutes the merchant would come knocking with the order. He found no pleasure, no feeling of superiority in his ability to summon the necessities to his door, only relief that his mother would not be subject to the hunger and anxiety of these poor souls.

As Karl watched, a boy approached the center of the line where a young woman had placed a wicker basket full of marks on the sidewalk. As he passed her he bent and grabbed a handle on the basket, upended it, dumping out the marks. Then he sprinted away with the basket. The woman cried out but no one moved to stop him—no one wanted to lose his place in line.

Karl started to give chase but Ernst restrained him.

“Don’t bother. You’ll never catch him.”

Karl watched the young woman gather her scattered marks into her apron and resume her long wait in line, weeping. His heart broke for her.

“This has to stop. Someone has to do something about this.”

“Ah, yes,” Ernst said, nodding sagely. “But who?”

They walked on. As they approached a corner, Ernst suddenly raised his cane and pressed its shaft against Karl’s chest.

“Listen. What’s that noise?”

Up ahead at the intersection, traffic had stopped. Instead of the roar of internal combustion engines, Karl heard something else. Other sounds, softer, less rhythmic, swelled in the air. A chaotic tapping and a shuffling cacophony of scrapes and draggings, accompanied by a dystonic chorus of high-pitched squeaks and creaks.

And then they inched into view—the lame, the blind, the damaged, dismembered, demented, and disfigured tatterdemalions of two wars: The few remaining veterans of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870—stooped, wizened figures in their seventies and eighties who had besieged Paris and proclaimed Wilhelm of Prussia as Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles—were leading the far larger body of pathetic survivors from the disastrous Great War, the War to End All Wars, the valiant men whose defeated leaders five years ago had abjectly agreed to impossible reparations in that same Hall of Mirrors.

Karl watched aghast as a young man with one arm passed within a few meters of him dragging a wheeled platform on which lay a limbless man, hardly more than a head with a torso. Neither was much older than he. The Grand Guignol parade was full of these fractions of men and their blind, deaf, limping, stumbling, hopping, staggering companions. Karl knew he might well be among them had he been born a year or two earlier.

Some carried signs begging, pleading, demanding higher pensions and disability allowances; they all looked worn and defeated, but mostly hungry. Here were the most pitiful victims of the runaway inflation.

Karl fell into line with them and pulled Ernst along.

“Really,” Ernst said, “this is hardly my idea of an entertaining afternoon.”

“We need to show them that they’re not alone, that we haven’t forgotten them. We need to show the government that we support them.”

“It will do no good,” Ernst said, grudgingly falling into step beside him. “It takes time for the government to authorize a pension increase. And even if it is approved, by the time it goes into effect, the increase will be meaningless.”

“This can’t go on! Someone has got to do something about this chaos!”

Ernst pointed ahead with his black cane. “There’s a suggestion.”

At the corner stood two brown-shirted men in paramilitary gear and caps. On their left upper arms were red bands emblazoned with a strange black twisted cross inside a white circle. Between them they held a banner:

             

COME TO US, COMRADES!

ADOLF HITLER WILL HELP YOU!

 

“Hitler,” Karl said slowly. “You mentioned him before, didn’t you?”

“Yes. The Austrian Gefreiter. He’ll be at that big fascist rally in Nuremberg tomorrow to commemorate something or other. I hope to get to hear him again. Marvelous speaker. Want to come along?”

Karl had heard about the rally—so had all the rest of Germany. Upward of two hundred thousand veterans and members of every right-wing volkisch paramilitary group in the country were expected in the Bavarian town to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War.

“I don’t think so. I don’t like big crowds. Especially a big crowd of fascists.”

“Some other time, then. I’ll call you when he’s going to address one of the beer hall meetings in Munich. He does that a lot. That way you’ll get the full impact of his speaking voice. Most entertaining.”

Adolf Hitler, Karl thought as he passed the brown-shirted men with the strange armbands. Could he be the man to save Germany?

“Yes, Ernst. Do call me. I wish to hear this man.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Today it takes 200 billion marks to buy a single US dollar.

—Volkischer Beobachter, October 22, 1923

 

 

“It’s like entering another country,” Karl murmured as he stood on the platform of the Munich train station.

Ernst stood beside him as they waited for a porter to take his bags.

“Not another country at all. Merely an armed camp filled with people as German as the rest of us. Perhaps more so.”

“People in love with uniforms.”

“And what could be more German than that?”

Ernst had sent him a message last week, scrawled in his reverse-slanted script on the blank back of a 100-million-mark note. Even with all its overworked presses running at full speed, the Reichsbank found itself limited to printing the new marks on only one side in order to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for currency. Ernst seemed to find it amusing to use the blank sides of the smaller denominations as stationery. And this note had invited Karl south to hear Herr Hitler.

Karl now wished he’d ignored the invitation. A chill had come over him as the train crossed into Bavaria; it began in the pit of his stomach, then encircled his chest and crept up his spine to his neck where it now insinuated icy fingers around his throat. Uniforms…military uniforms everywhere, lolling about the train station, marching in the streets, standing on the corners, and none of them sporting the comfortably familiar field gray of regular Reichswehr troops. Young men, middle-aged men, dressed in brown, black, blue, and green, all with watchful, suspicious eyes and tight, hostile faces.

Something sinister was growing here in the south, something unclean, something dangerous.

It’s the times, he told himself. Just another facet of the chaotic zeitgeist.

No surprise that Bavaria was like an armed camp. Less than three weeks ago its cabinet, aghast at what it saw as Berlin’s cowardly submission to the continuing Franco-Belgian presence in the Ruhr Valley, had declared a state of emergency and suspended the Weimar Constitution within its borders. Gustav von Kahr had been declared Generalstaatskommissar of Bavaria with dictatorial powers. Berlin had blustered threats but so far had made no move against the belligerent southern state, preferring diplomatic avenues for the moment.

But how long would that last? The communists in the north were trying to ignite a revolution in Saxony, calling for a “German October,” and the more radical Bavarians here in the south were calling for a march on Berlin because of the government’s impotence in foreign and domestic affairs, especially in finance and currency.

Currency…when the mark had sunk to five billion to the dollar two weeks ago, Karl had paid off the mortgage on the estate plus the loans against his mother’s jewelry with a US ten-cent piece—what the Americans called a “dime.”

Something had to happen. The charges were set, the fuse was lit. Where would the explosion occur? And when?

“Think of them as human birds,” Ernst said, pointing to their left at two groups in different uniforms. “You can tell who’s who by their plumage. The gray are soldaten…regular Reichswehr soldiers, of course. The green are Bavarian State Police. And as we move through Munich you’ll see the city’s regular police force, dressed in blue.”

“Gray, green, blue,” Karl murmured.

“Right. Those are the official colors. The unofficial colors are brown and black. They belong in varying mixes to the Nazi SA—their so-called storm troopers—and the Reichskriegsflagge and Bund Oberland units.”

“So confusing.”

“It is. Bavaria has been a hotbed of fascism since the war, but mostly it was a fragmented thing—more feisty little paramilitary groups than you could count. But things are different these days. The groups have been coalescing, and now the three major factions have allied themselves into something called the Kampfbund.”

“The ‘Battle Group’?”

“Precisely. And they’re quite ready for battle. There are more caches of rifles and machine guns and grenades hidden in cellars or buried in and around Munich than Berlin could imagine in its worst nightmares. Hitler’s Nazis are the leading faction of the Kampfbund, and right now he and the Bavarian government are at odds. Hitler wants to march on Berlin, General Commissioner Kahr does not. At the moment, Kahr has the upper hand. He’s got the Green Police, the Blue Police, and the Reichswehr regulars to keep the Kampfbund in line. The question is, how long can he hold their loyalty when the hearts of many of his troops are in the Nazi camp, and Hitler’s speeches stir more and more to the Nazi cause?”

Karl felt the chill tighten around his throat. He wished Ernst hadn’t invited him to Munich. He wished he hadn’t accepted.

“Maybe now is not a good time to be here.”

“Nonsense! It’s the best time! Can’t you feel the excitement in the air? Don’t you sense the huge forces at work around us? Stop and listen and you’ll hear the teeth of cosmic gears grinding into motion. The clouds have gathered and are storing their charges. The lightning of history is about to strike and we are near the ground point. I know it as surely as I know my name.”

“Lightning can be deadly.”

Ernst smiled. “Which makes it all the more entertaining.”

 

 

* * *

 

“Why a beer hall?” Karl asked as they sat in the huge main room of the Burgerbraukeller.

A buxom waitress set a fresh pair of liter steins of lager on the rough planked table before them.

Ernst waved a hand around. “Because Munich is the heart of beer-drinking country. If you want to reach these people, you speak to them where they drink their beer.”

The Burgerbraukeller was huge, squatting on a sizable plot of land on the east side of the Isar River that cut the city in two. After the Zirkus Krone, it was the largest meeting place in Munich. Scattered inside its vast complex were numerous separate bars and dining halls, but the centerpiece was the main hall. All its 3,000 seats were filled tonight, with latecomers standing in the aisles and crowded at the rear.

Karl quaffed a few ounces of lager to wash down a mouthful of sausage. All around him were men in black and various shades of brown, all impatient for the arrival of their Führer. He saw some in business suits, and even a few in traditional Bavarian lederhosen and Tyrolean hats. Karl and Ernst had made instant friends with their table neighbors by sharing the huge platter of cheese, bread, and sausage they had ordered from the bustling kitchen. Even though they were not in uniform, not aligned with any Kampfbund organization, and wore no armbands, the two Berlin newcomers were now considered komraden by the locals who shared their long table. They were even more welcome when Ernst mentioned that Karl was the son of Colonel Stehr who’d fought and died at Argonne.

Far better to be welcomed here as comrades, Karl thought, than the opposite. He’d been listening to the table talk, the repeated references to Adolf Hitler in reverent tones as the man who would rescue Germany from all its enemies, both within and without, and lead the Fatherland back to the glory it deserved. Karl sensed that even the power of God might not be enough to save a man in this crowd who had something to say against Herr Hitler.

The hazy air was ripe with the effluvia of any beer hall: spilled hops and malt, tobacco smoke, the garlicky tang of steaming sausage, sharp cheese, sweaty bodies, and restless anticipation. Karl was finishing off his latest stein when he heard a stir run through the crowd. Someone with a scarred face had arrived at the rostrum on the bandstand. He spoke a few words into the increasing noise and ended by introducing Herr Adolf Hitler.

With a thunderous roar the crowd was on its feet and shouting “Heil! Heil!” as a thin man, about five-nine or so, who could have been anywhere from mid-thirties to mid-forties in age, ascended the steps to the rostrum. He was dressed in a brown wool jacket, a white shirt with a stiff collar, a narrow tie, with brown knickers and stockings on his short, bandy legs. Straight brown hair parted on the right and combed across his upper forehead; sallow complexion, almost yellow; thin lips under a narrow brush of a mustache. He walked stooped slightly forward with his head canted to the left and his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets.

Karl could hardly believe his eyes.

This is the man they call Führer? He looks like a shopkeeper, or a government clerk. This is the man they think is going to save Germany? Are they all mad or drunk…or both?

Hitler reached the rostrum and gazed out over the cheering audience, and it was then that Karl had his first glimpse of the man’s unforgettable eyes. They shone like beacons from their sockets, piercing the room, staggering Karl with their startling pale blue fire. Flashing, hypnotic, gleaming with fanaticism, they ranged the room, quieting it, challenging another voice to interrupt his.

And then he began to speak, his surprisingly rich baritone rising and falling like a Wagnerian opus, hurling sudden gutturals through the air for emphasis like fist-sized cobblestones.

For the first ten minutes he spoke evenly and stood stiffly with his hands trapped in his jacket pockets. But as his voice rose and his passion grew, his hands broke free, fine, graceful, long-fingered hands that fluttered like pigeons and swooped like hawks, then knotted into fists to pound the top of the rostrum with sledgehammer blows.

The minutes flew, gathering into one hour, then two. At first Karl had managed to remain aloof, picking apart Hitler’s words, separating the carefully selected truths from the half truths and the outright fictions. Then, in spite of himself, he began to fall under the man’s spell. This Adolf Hitler was such a passionate speaker, so caught up in his own words that one had to go along with him; whatever the untruths and specious logic in his oratory, no one could doubt that this man believed unequivocally every word that he spoke, and somehow transferred that fervent conviction to his audience so that they too became unalterably convinced of the truth of what he was saying.

He was never more powerful than when he called on all loyal Germans to come to the aid of a sick and failing Germany, one not merely financially and economically ill, but a Germany on its intellectual and moral deathbed. No question that Germany was sick, struck down by a disease that poultices and salves and cathartics could not cure. Germany needed radical surgery: The sick and gangrenous parts that were poisoning the rest of the system had to be cut away and burned before the healing could begin. Karl listened and became entranced, transfixed, unmindful of the time, a prisoner of that voice, those eyes.

And then this man, this Adolf Hitler, was standing in front of the rostrum, bathed in sweat, his hair hanging over his forehead, waving his arms, calling for all loyal Germans who truly cared for their Fatherland to rally around the Nazi Party and call for a march on Berlin where they would extract a promise from the feeble Weimar republicans to banish the Jews and the communists from all positions of power and drive the French and Belgian troops from the Ruhr Valley and once again make the Fatherland’s borders inviolate, or by God, there would be a new government in power in Berlin, one that would bring Germany to the greatness that was her destiny. German misery must be broken by German iron. Our day is here! Our time is now!

The main hall went mad as Hitler stepped back and let the frenzied cheering of more than three thousand voices rattle the walls and rafters around him. Even Karl was on his feet, ready to shake his fist in the air and shout at the top of his lungs. Suddenly he caught himself.

What am I doing?

 

 

* * *

 

“Well, what did you think of the Gefreiter?” Ernst said. “Our strutting lance corporal?”

They were out on Rosenheimerstrasse, making their way back to the hotel, and Karl’s ears had finally stopped ringing. Ahead of them in the darkness, mist rising from the Isar River sparkled in the glow of the lights lining the Ludwig Bridge.

“I think he’s the most magnetic, powerful, mesmerizing speaker I’ve ever heard. Frighteningly so.”

“Well, he’s obviously mad—a complete loon. A master of hyperbolic sophistry, but hardly frightening.”

“He’s so…so…so anti-Semitic.”

Ernst shrugged. “They all are. It’s just rhetoric. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Ernst stopped and stood staring at Karl. “Wait. You don’t mean to tell me you’re…?”

Karl turned and nodded silently in the darkness.

“But Colonel Stehr wasn’t—”

“His wife was.”

“Good heavens, man! I had no idea!”

“Well, what’s so unusual? What’s wrong with a German officer marrying a woman who happens to be Jewish?”

“Nothing, of course. It’s just that one becomes so used to these military types and their—”

“Do you know that General von Seeckt, commander of the entire German army, has a Jewish wife? So does Chancellor Stresemann.”

“Of course. The Nazis point that out at every opportunity.”

“Right! We’re everywhere!” Karl calmed himself with an effort. “Sorry, Ernst. I don’t know why I got so excited. I don’t even consider myself a Jew. I’m a human being. Period.”

“Perhaps, but by Jewish law, if the mother is Jewish, then so are the children.”

Karl stared at him. “How do you know that?”

“Everybody knows that. But that doesn’t matter. The locals we’ve met know you as Colonel Stehr’s son. That’s what will count here in the next week or so.”

“Next week or so? Aren’t we returning to Berlin?”

Ernst gripped his arm. “No, Karl. We’re staying. Things are coming to a head. The next few days promise to be most entertaining.”

“I shouldn’t—”

“Come back to the hotel. I’ll fix you an absinthe. You look like you could use one.”

Karl remembered the bitter taste, then realized he could probably do with a bit of oblivion tonight.

“All right. But just one.”

“Excellent! Absinthe tonight, and we’ll plan our next steps in the morning.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Today it takes 4 trillion marks to buy a single US dollar.

—Volkischer Beobachter, November 8, 1923

 

 

“Herr Hitler’s speaking in Freising tonight,” Ernst said.

They strolled through the bright, crisp morning air, past onion-cupolaed churches and pastel house fronts that would have looked more at home along the Tiber than the Isar.

“How far is that?”

“About twenty miles north. But I have a better idea. Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria’s honorable dictator, is speaking at the Burgerbraukeller tonight.”

“I’d rather hear Hitler.”

It was already more than a week into November and Karl was still in Munich. He’d expected to be home long ago but he’d found himself too captivated by Adolf Hitler to leave. It was a strange attraction, equal parts fascination and revulsion. Here was a man who might pull together Germany’s warring factions and make them one, yet then might wreak havoc upon the freedoms of the Weimar Constitution. But where would the Constitution be by year’s end with old mark notes now being over-printed with EINE BILLION?

Karl felt like a starving sparrow contemplating a viper’s offer to guard her nest while she hunts for food. Surely her nest would be well protected from other birds in her absence, but could she count on finding any eggs left when she returned?

He’d spoken to a number of Jews in Munich, shopkeepers mostly, engaging them in casual conversation about the Kampfbund groups, and Herr Hitler in particular. The seismic upheavals in the economy had left them frazzled and desperate, certain that their country would be in ruins by the end of the year unless somebody did something. Most said they’d support anyone who could bring the economic chaos and runaway inflation under control. Hitler and his Nazis promised definitive solutions. So what if the country had to live under a dictatorship for a while? Nothing—nothing—could be worse than this. After all, hadn’t the Kaiser been a dictator? And they’d certainly done better under him than with this Weimar Republic with its Constitution that guaranteed so many freedoms. What good were freedom of the press and speech and assembly if you were starving? As for the anti-Semitism, most of the Munich Jews echoed Ernst’s dismissal: mere rhetoric. Nothing more than tough talk to excite the beer drinkers.

Still uneasy, Karl found himself drawn back again and again to hear Hitler speak—in the Zirkus Krone, and in the Burgerbraukeller and other beer halls around the city—hoping each time the man would say something to allay his fears and allow him to embrace the hope the Nazis offered.

Absinthe only added to the compulsion. Karl had taken to drinking a glass with Ernst before attending each new Hitler speech, and as a result he had acquired a taste for the bitter stuff.

Because Herr Hitler seemed to be speaking all the time.

Especially since the failed communist putsch in Hamburg. It failed because the German workers refused to rally to the red flag and Reichswehr troops easily put down the revolution in its second day. There would be no German October. But the attempt had incited the Kampfbund groups to near hysteria. Karl saw more uniforms in Munich’s streets than he’d seen in Berlin during the war. And Herr Hitler was there in the thick of it, fanning the sparks of patriotic fervor into a bonfire wherever he found an audience.

Karl attended his second Hitler speech while under the influence of absinthe, and there he experienced his first hallucination. It happened while Hitler was reaching his final crescendo: The hall wavered before Karl, the light dimmed, all the color drained from his sight, leaving only black and white and shades of gray; he had the impression of being in a crowded room, just like the beer hall, and then it passed. It hadn’t lasted long enough for Karl to capture any details, but it had left him shivering and afraid.

The following night it happened again—the same flash of black and white, the same aftershock of dread.

It was the absinthe, he was sure. He’d heard that it caused delirium and hallucinations and even madness in those who overused it. But Karl did not feel he was going mad. No, this was something else. Not madness, but a different level of perception. He had a sense of a hidden truth, just beyond the grasp of his senses, beckoning to him, reaching for him. He felt he’d merely grazed the surface of that awful truth, and that if he kept reaching he’d soon seize it.

And he knew how to extend his reach: more absinthe.

Ernst was only too glad to have another enthusiast for his favorite libation.

“Forget Herr Hitler tonight,” Ernst said. “This will be better. Bavaria’s triumvirate will be there in person—Kahr, General Lossow, and Colonel von Seisser. Rumor has it that Kahr is going to make a dramatic announcement. Some say he’s going to declare Bavaria’s independence. Others say he’s going to return Crown Prince Rupprecht to the throne and restore the Bavarian monarchy. You don’t want to miss this, Karl.”

“What about Hitler and the rest of the Kampfbund?”

“They’re frothing at the mouth. They’ve been invited to attend but not to participate. It’s clear, I think, that Kahr is making a move to upstage the Kampfbund and solidify his leadership position. By tomorrow morning, Hitler and his cronies may find themselves awash in a hysterical torrent of Bavarian nationalism. This will be worse than any political defeat—they’ll be…irrelevant. Think of their outrage, think of their frustration.” Ernst rubbed his palms with glee. “Oh, this will be most entertaining!”

Reluctantly, Karl agreed. He felt he was getting closer and closer to that elusive vision, but even if Generalstaatskommissar Kahr tried to pull the rug out from under the Kampfbund, Karl was sure he would have plenty of future opportunities to listen to Herr Hitler.

 

 

* * *

 

Karl and Ernst arrived early at the Burgerbraukeller, and a good thing too. The city’s Blue Police had to close the doors at seven fifteen when the hall filled to overflowing. This was a much higher class audience than Hitler attracted. Well-dressed businessmen in tall hats and women in long dresses mingled with military officers and members of the Bavarian provincial cabinet; the local newspapers were represented by their editors rather than mere reporters. Everyone in Munich wanted to hear what Generalstaatskommissar Kahr had to say, and those left in the cold drizzle outside protested angrily.

They were the lucky ones, Karl decided soon after Gustav von Kahr began to speak. The squat, balding royalist had no earthshaking announcement to make. Instead, he stood hunched over the rostrum, with Lossow and Seisser, the other two thirds of the ruling triumvirate, seated on the bandstand behind him, and read a dull, endless anti-Marxist treatise in a listless monotone.

“Let’s leave,” Karl said after fifteen minutes of droning.

Ernst shook his head and glanced to their right. “Look who just arrived.”

Karl turned and recognized the figure in the light tan trench coat standing behind a pillar near the rear of the hall, chewing on a fingernail.

“Hitler! I thought he was supposed to be speaking in Freising.”

“That’s what the flyers said. Apparently he changed his mind. Or perhaps he simply wanted everyone to think he’d be in Freising.” Ernst’s voice faded as he turned in his seat and scanned the audience. “I wonder…”

“Wonder what?”

He leaned close and whispered in Karl’s ear. “I wonder if Herr Hitler might not be planning something here tonight.”

Karl’s intestines constricted into a knot. “A putsch?”

“Keep your voice down. Yes. Why not? Bavaria’s ruling triumvirate and most of its cabinet are here. If I were planning a takeover, this would be the time and place.”

“But all those police outside.”

Ernst shrugged. “Perhaps he’ll just take over the stage and launch into one of his speeches. Either way, history could be made here tonight.”

Karl glanced back at Hitler and wondered if this was what the nearly grasped vision was about. He nudged Ernst.

“Did you bring the absinthe?”

“Of course. But we won’t be able to fix it properly here.” He paused. “I have an idea, though.”

He signaled the waitress and ordered two snifters of cognac. She looked at him strangely, but returned in a few minutes and placed the glasses on the table next to their beer steins. Ernst pulled his silver flask from his pocket and poured a more than generous amount of absinthe into the cognac.

“It’s not turning yellow,” Karl said.

“It only does that in water.” Ernst lifted his snifter and swirled the greenish contents. “This was Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite way of diluting his absinthe. He called it his ‘earthquake.’” Ernst smiled as he clinked his glass against Karl’s. “To earthshaking events.”

Karl took a sip and coughed. The bitterness of the wormwood was enhanced rather than cut by the burn of the cognac. He washed it down with a gulp of ale. He would have poured the rest of his “earthquake” into Ernst’s glass if he hadn’t felt he needed every drop of the absinthe to reach the elusive vision. So he finished the entire snifter, chasing each sip with more ale. He wondered if he’d be able to walk out of here unassisted at the night’s end.

He was just setting down the empty glass when he heard shouting outside. The doors at the rear of the hall burst open with a shattering bang as helmeted figures charged in brandishing sabers, pistols, and rifles with fixed bayonets. From their brown shirts and the swastikas on their red armbands Karl knew they weren’t the police.

“Nazi storm troopers!” Ernst said.

Pandemonium erupted. Some men cried out in shock and outrage while others shouted “Heil!” Some were crawling under the tables while others were climbing atop them for a better view. Women screamed and fainted at the sight of a machine gun being set up at the door. Karl looked around for Hitler and found him charging down the center aisle holding a pistol aloft. As he reached the bandstand he fired a shot into the ceiling.

Sudden silence.

Hitler climbed up next to General Commissioner von Kahr and turned toward the crowd. Karl blinked at the sight of him. He had shed the trench coat and was wearing a poorly cut morning coat with an Iron Cross pinned over the left breast. He looked…ridiculous, more like the maître d’ in a seedy restaurant than the savior of Germany.

But then the pale blue eyes cast their spell and the familiar baritone rang through the hall announcing that a national revolution had broken out in Germany. The Bavarian cities of Augsburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg, and Wurzburg were now in his control; the Reichswehr and State Police were marching from their barracks under Nazi flags; the Weimar government was no more. A new national German Reich was being formed. Hitler was in charge.

Ernst snickered. “The Gefreiter looks like a waiter who’s led a putsch against the restaurant staff.”

Karl barely heard him. The vision…it was coming…close now…the absinthe, fueled by the cognac and ale, was drawing it nearer than ever before…the room was flickering about him, the colors draining away…

And then the Burgerbraukeller was gone and he was in blackness…silent, formless blackness…but not alone. He detected movement around him in the palpable darkness…

And then he saw them.

Human forms, thin, pale, bedraggled, sunken-cheeked and hollow-eyed, dressed in rags or dressed not at all, and thin, so painfully thin, like parchment-covered skeletons through which each rib and each bump and nodule on the pelvis and hips could be touched and numbered, all stumbling, sliding, staggering, shambling, groping toward him out of the dark. At first he thought it a dream, a nightmare reprise of the march of the starving disabled veterans he’d witnessed in Berlin, but these…people…were different. No tattered uniforms here. The ones who had clothing were dressed in striped prison pajamas, and there were so many of them. With their ranks spanning to the right and left as far as Karl could see, and stretching and fading off into the distance to where the horizon might have been, their number was beyond counting…thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions…

And all coming his way.

They began to pick up speed as they neared, breaking into a staggering run like a herd of frightened cattle. Closer, now…their gaunt faces became masks of fear, pale lips drawn back over toothless mouths, giving no sign that they saw him…he could see no glint of light in the dark hollows of their eye sockets…but he gasped as other details became visible.

They had been mutilated—branded, actually. A six-pointed star had been carved into the flesh of each. On the forehead, between the breasts, on the belly—a bleeding Star of David. The only color not black, white, or gray was the red of the blood that oozed from each of those six-pointed brands.

But why were they running? What was spurring the stampede?

And then he heard a voice, shouting, faint and far off at first, then louder: “Alle Juden raus!” Over and over: “Alle Juden raus! Alle Juden raus!” Louder and louder as they approached until Karl had to clasp his hands over his ears to protect them.

“ALLE JUDEN RAUS! ALLE JUDEN RAUS!”

And then they were upon him, mobbing him, knocking him to his knees and then flat on his face in their panicked flight through the darkness, oblivious as they stepped on him and tripped over him in their blind rush to nowhere. He could not regain his feet; he did not try. He had no fear of being crushed because they weighed almost nothing, but he could not rise against their numbers. So he remained facedown in the darkness with his hands over his head and listened to that voice.

“ALLE JUDEN RAUS! ALLE JUDEN RAUS!”

After what seemed an eternity, they were past. Karl lifted his head. He was alone in the darkness. No…not alone. Someone else…a lone figure approaching. A naked woman, old, short, thin, with long gray hair, limping his way on arthritic knees. Something familiar about her—

“Mother!”

He stood paralyzed, rooted, unable to turn from her nakedness. She looked so thin, and so much older, as if she’d aged twenty years. And into each floppy breast had been carved a Star of David.

He sobbed as he held his arms out to her.

“Dear God, Mother! What have they done to you?”

But she took no notice of him, limping past as if he did not exist.

“Mother, I—!”

He turned, reaching to grab her arm as she passed, but froze in mute shock when he saw the mountain.

All the gaunt living dead who had rushed past were piled in a mound that dwarfed the Alps themselves, carelessly tossed like discarded dolls into a charnel heap that stretched miles into the darkness above him.

Only now they had eyes. Dead eyes, staring sightlessly his way, each with a silent plea…help us…save us…please don’t let this happen…

His mother—she was in there. He had to find her, get her out of there. He ran toward the tower of wasted human flesh, but before he reached it the blacks and whites began to shimmer and melt, bleeding color as that damned voice grew louder and louder…“ALLE JUDEN RAUS! ALLE JUDEN RAUS!”

And Karl knew that voice. God help him, he knew that voice.

Adolf Hitler’s.

Suddenly he found himself back in the Burgerbraukeller, on his feet, staring at the man who still stood at the rostrum. Only seconds had passed. It had seemed so much longer.

As Hitler finished his proclamation, the triumvirate of Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser were marched off the stage at gunpoint. And Hitler stood there with his feet spread and his arms folded across his chest, staring in triumphant defiance at the shocked crowd mingling and murmuring before him.

Karl now understood what he had seen. Hitler’s hate wasn’t mere rhetoric. This madman meant what he said. Every word of it. He intended the destruction of German Jewry, of Jews everywhere. And now, here in this beer hall, he was making a grab for the power to do just that. And he was succeeding!

He had to be stopped!

As Hitler turned to follow the captured triumvirate, Karl staggered forward, his arm raised, his finger pointing, ready to accuse, to shout out a denunciation. But no sound came from his throat. His lips were working, his lungs pumping, but his vocal cords were locked. Hoarse, breathy hisses were the only sounds he could make.

But those sounds were enough to draw the attention of the Nazi storm troopers. The nearest turned and pointed their rifles at him. Ernst leaped to his side and restrained him, pulling his arm down.

“He’s not well. He’s been sick and tonight’s excitement has been too much for him.”

Karl tried to shake free of Ernst. He didn’t care about the storm troopers or their weapons. These people had to hear, had to know what Hitler and his National Socialists planned. But then Hitler was leaving, following the captured triumvirate from the bandstand.

In the frightened and excited confusion that followed, Ernst steered Karl toward one of the side doors. But their way was blocked by a baby-faced storm trooper.

“No one leaves until the Führer says so.”

“This man is sick!” Ernst shouted. “Do you know who his father was? Colonel Stehr himself! This is the son of a hero of the Argonne! Let him into the fresh air immediately!”

The young trooper, certainly no more than eighteen or nineteen, was taken aback by Ernst’s outburst. It was highly unlikely that he’d ever heard of a Colonel Stehr, but he stepped aside to let them pass.

The drizzle had turned to snow, and the cold air began to clear Karl’s head, but still he had no voice. Pulling away from Ernst’s supporting arm, he half ran, half stumbled across the grounds of the Burgerbraukeller, crowded now with exuberant members of the Kampfbund. He headed toward the street, wanting to scream, to cry out his fear and warn the city, the country, that a murderous lunatic was taking over.

When he reached the far side of Rosenheimerstrasse, he found an alley, leaned into it, and vomited. After his stomach was empty, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and returned to where Ernst waited on the sidewalk.

“Good heavens, man. What got into you back there?”

Karl leaned against a lamppost and told him about the vision, about the millions of dead Jews, and Hitler’s voice and what it was shouting.

Ernst was a long time replying. His eyes had a faraway look, almost glazed, as if he were trying to see the future Karl had described.

“That was the absinthe,” he said finally. “Lautrec’s earthquake. You’ve been indulging a bit much lately and you’re not used to it. Lautrec was institutionalized because of it. Van Gogh cut off one of his ears under the influence.”

Karl grabbed the front of Ernst’s overcoat. “No! The absinthe is responsible, I’ll grant that, but it only opened the door for me. This was more than a hallucination. This was a vision of the future, a warning. He’s got to be stopped, Ernst!”

“How? You heard him. There’s a national revolution going on, and he’s leading it.”

A steely resolve, cold as the snow falling around them, was taking shape within Karl.

“I’ve been entrusted with a warning,” he said softly. “I’m not going to ignore it.”

“What are you going to do? Flee the country?”

“No. I’m going to stop Adolf Hitler.”

“How?”

“By any means necessary.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Germany is having a nervous breakdown. There is nothing sane to report.

—Ben Hecht, 1923

 

 

The rest of the night was a fearful phantasm, filled with shouts, shots, and conflicting rumors—yes, there was a national revolution; no, there were no uprisings in Nuremberg or the other cities.

One thing was clear to Karl: A revolution was indeed in progress in Munich. All through the night, as he and Ernst wandered the city, they crossed paths again and again with detachments of brown-shirted men marching under the swastika banner. And lining the sidewalks were men and women of all ages, cheering them on.

Karl wanted to grab and shake each one of them and scream into their faces, You don’t know what you’re doing! You don’t know what they’re planning!

No one was moving to stop the putsch. The Blue Police, the Green Police, the Reichswehr troops were nowhere in sight. Ernst led Karl across the river to the Reichswehr headquarters where they watched members of the Reichskriegsflagge segment of the Kampfbund strutting in and out of the entrance.

“It’s true!” Karl said. “The Reichswehr troops are with them!”

Karl tried to call Berlin to see what was happening there but could not get a phone connection. They went to the offices of the Munchener Post, a newspaper critical of Hitler in the past, but found its offices ransacked, every typewriter gone, every piece of printing equipment destroyed.

“The putsch is not even a day old and they’ve started already!” Karl said, standing on the glass-littered sidewalk in the wan dawn light and surveying the damage. “Crush anyone who disagrees with you.”

“Yes!” a voice cried behind them. “Crush them! Grind them under your heel!”

They turned to see a bearded middle-aged man waving a bottle of Champagne as he joined them before the Post offices. He wore a swastika armband over a tattered army coat.

“It’s our time now!” The man guzzled some of the Champagne and held it aloft. “A toast! Germany for the Germans, and damn the Jews to hell!” He thrust the bottle at Karl. “Here! Donated by a Jew down the street.”

Icy spikes scored the inner walls of Karl’s chest.

“Really?” he said, taking the half-full bottle. “Donated?”

“Requisitioned, actually.” He barked a laugh. “Along with his watch and his wife’s jewelry…after they were arrested!”

Uncontrollable fury, fueled by the growing unease of the past two weeks and the horror of his vision in the beer hall, exploded in Karl. He reversed his grip on the bottle and smashed it against the side of the man’s head.

“Karl!” Ernst cried.

The man stiffened and fell flat on his back in the slush, coat open, arms and legs akimbo.

Karl stared down at him, shocked by what he’d done. He’d never struck another man in his life. He knelt over him.

“He’s still breathing.”

Then he saw the pistol in the man’s belt. He gripped the handle and pulled it free. He straightened and cradled the weapon in his trembling hands as he turned toward Ernst.

“You asked me before how I was going to stop Hitler. Here is the answer.”

“Have you gone mad?”

“You don’t have to come along. Safer for you if you return to the hotel while I search out Herr Hitler.”

“Don’t insult me. I’ll be beside you all the way.”

Karl stared at Ernst, surprised and warmed by the reply.

“Thank you, Ernst.”

Ernst grinned, his eyes bright with excitement. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

 

 

* * *

 

Throughout the morning, conflicting rumors traveled up and down the Munich streets with the regularity of the city trolleys.

The triumvirate has thrown in with Hitler…the triumvirate is free and planning countermoves against the putsch…the Reichswehr has revolted and is ready to march on Berlin behind Hitler…the Reichswehr is marching on Munich to crush this putsch just as it crushed the communist attempt in Hamburg last month…Hitler is in complete control of Munich and its armed forces…support for the putsch is eroding among some police units and the young army officers…

Karl chased each rumor, trying to learn the truth, but truth seemed to be an elusive commodity in Munich. He shuttled back and forth across the river, between the putsch headquarters in the Burgerbraukeller on the east bank and the government offices around Marianplatz on the west, his right hand thrust into his coat pocket, clutching the pistol, searching for Hitler. He and Ernst had separated, figuring that two searchers could cover more ground apart than together.

By noon Karl began to get the feeling that Hitler might not have as much control as he wished people to think. True, the putschists seemed to have an iron grip on the city east of the river, and a swastika flag still flew from a balcony of the New City Hall on the west side, but Karl had noticed the green uniforms of the Bavarian State Police gathering at the west ends of the bridges across the Isar. They weren’t blocking traffic, but they seemed to be on guard. And Reichswehr troops from the Seventh Division were moving through the city. Reichswehr headquarters on the west bank was still held by units of the Kampfbund, but the headquarters itself was now surrounded by two Reichswehr infantry battalions and a number of artillery units.

The tide is turning, Karl thought with grim satisfaction.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to use the pistol after all.

He was standing on the west side of the Ludwig bridge, keeping his back to the wind, when he saw Ernst hurrying toward him from the far side.

“They’re coming this way!” he shouted, his cheeks red with the excitement and the cold.

“Who?”

“Everyone! All the putschists—thousands of them. They’ve begun a march through the city. And Hitler’s leading them.”

No sooner had Ernst spoken than Karl spied the front ranks of the march—brown-shirted Nazis carrying the red and white flags that whipped and snapped in the wind. Behind them came the rest, walking twelve abreast, headed directly toward the Ludwig Bridge. He spotted Hitler in the front ranks wearing his tan trench coat and a felt hat. Beside him was General Ludendorf, one of the most respected war heroes in the nation.

A crowd of putsch supporters and the merely curious gathered as the Green Police hurried across to the east side of the bridge to stop the marchers. Before they could set up, squads of storm troopers swarmed from the flanks of the march, surrounding and disarming them.

The march surged across the bridge unimpeded.

Karl tightened his grip on the pistol. He would end this here, now, personal consequences be damned. But he couldn’t get a clear view of Hitler through the throng surrounding him. To his dismay, many bystanders from the crowd joined the march as it passed, further swelling its ranks.

The march streamed into the already crowded Marianplatz in front of City Hall where it was met with cheers and cries of adulation by the thousands mobbed there. A delirious rendition of “Deutschland Uber Alles” rattled the windows all around the plaza and ended with countless cries of “Heil Hitler!”

At no time could Karl get within a hundred yards of his target.

And now, its ranks doubled, the march was off again, this time northward up Wienstrasse.

“They’re heading for Reichswehr headquarters,” Ernst said.

“It’s surrounded. They’ll never get near it.”

Ernst shrugged. “Who’s going to stop them? Who’s going to fire with General Ludendorf at Hitler’s side and all those civilians with them?”

Karl felt his jaw muscles bunch as the memory of the vision surged through his brain, dragging with it the image of his elderly, withered, unclothed, bleeding mother.

“I am.”

He took off at a run along a course parallel to the march, easily outdistancing the slow-moving crowd. He calculated that the marchers would have to come up Residenzstrasse in order to reach the Reichswehr building. He ducked into a doorway of the Feldherrnhalle, near the top of the street and crouched there, panting from the unaccustomed exertion. Seconds later, Ernst joined him, barely breathing hard.

“You didn’t have to come.”

Ernst smiled. “Of course I did. We’re witnessing the making of history.”

Karl pulled the pistol from his coat pocket. “But after today someone other than Adolf Hitler will be making it.”

At the top of Residenzstrasse, where it opened into a plaza, Karl saw units of the Green Police setting up a barricade.

Good. It would slow the march, and that would be his moment.

“Here they come,” Ernst said.

Karl’s palms began to sweat as he searched the front ranks for his target. The pistol grip was slippery in his hand by the time he identified Hitler. This was it. This was his moment in history, to turn it from the horrors the vision had shown him.

Doubt gripped the base of his throat in a stranglehold. What if the vision was wrong? What if it had been the absinthe and nothing more? What if he was about to murder a man because of a drunken hallucination?

He tore free of the questions. No. No doubts. No hesitation. Hitler has to die. Here. Now. By my hand.

As he’d predicted, the march slowed when it neared the barricade and the storm troopers approached the Green Police shouting, “Don’t shoot! We are your comrades! We have General Ludendorf with us!”

Karl raised the pistol, waiting for his chance.

And then a passage opened between him and Hitler’s trench-coated form.

Now! It has to be now!

He took aim, cautiously, carefully. He wasn’t experienced with pistols. His father had taken him hunting with a rifle or a shotgun as a young man, but he’d never found much pleasure in it. He found no pleasure in this, only duty. But he knew how to aim, and he had the heart of this strutting little monster in his sights. He remembered his father’s words…“Squeeze, don’t pull…squeeze…be surprised by the shot…”

And while Karl waited for his surprise, he imagined the tapered lead cylinder blasting from the muzzle, hurtling toward Hitler, plunging into his chest, tearing through lung and heart, ripping the life from him before he could destroy the lives of the hapless, helpless, innocent millions he so hated. He saw Hitler twist and fall, saw a brief, violent spasm of rage and confusion as the milling putschists fired wildly in all directions, rioting until the Green Police and the regular army units closed in to divide their ranks, arrest their leaders, and disperse the rest. Perhaps another Jew hater would rise, but he would not have this man’s unique combination of personal magnetism and oratory power. The future Karl had seen would never happen. His bullet would sever the link from this time and place to that future.

And so he let his sweat-slick forefinger caress the curve of the trigger…squeezing…

But just as the weapon fired, something brushed against his arm. The bullet coughed into the chill air, high, missing Hitler.

Time stopped. The marchers stood frozen, some in midstride. All except Hitler. His head was turned Karl’s way, his pale blue eyes searching the doorways, the windows. And then those eyes fixed on Karl’s. The two men stared at each other for an instant, an eternity…then…Hitler smiled.

And with that smile time resumed its course as Karl’s single shot precipitated a barrage of gunfire from the Green Police and the Kampfbund troops. Chaos erupted on Residenzstrasse. Karl watched in horror as people ran in all directions, screaming, bleeding, falling, and dying. The pavement became red and slick with blood. He saw Hitler go down and stay down. He prayed that someone else’s bullet had found him.

Finally the shooting stopped. The guns were silent but the air remained filled with the cries of the wounded. To Karl’s shock he saw Hitler struggle to his feet and flee along the sidewalk, holding his arm. Before Karl could gather his wits and take aim again with his pistol, Hitler had jumped into a yellow Opel sedan and sped away.

Karl added his own shouts to those of the wounded. He turned to Ernst.

“It was you! Why did you hit my arm? I had him in my sights and you…you made me miss!”

“Terribly sorry,” Ernst said, avidly scanning the carnage on the street before them. “It was an accident. I was leaning over for a look and lost my balance. Not to worry. I think you accomplished your goal: This putsch is over.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Munich putsch definitely eliminates Hitler and his National Socialist followers.

—The New York Times, November 9, 1923

 

 

Karl was overjoyed when Adolf Hitler was captured by the Green Police two days later, charged with high treason, and thrown into jail. His National Socialist Party was disbanded and declared illegal. Adolf Hitler had lost his political firmament, his freedom, and because he was an Austrian, there even was a good possibility he would be deported after his trial.

While waiting for the trial, Karl reopened his bookstore and tried to resume a normal routine in Berlin. But the vision, and the specter of Adolf Hitler, haunted him. Hitler was still alive, might still wreak the horrors Karl had seen. He hungered for the trial, to see Hitler humiliated, sentenced to a minimum of twenty years. Or deported. Or best yet: shot as a traitor.

He saw less and less of Ernst during the months leading to the trial. Ernst seemed bored with Berlin. New, gold-backed marks had brought inflation under control, the new government seemed stable, there were no new putsches in the works…life was far less “entertaining.”

 

 

* * *

 

They met up again in Munich on the day of Hitler’s sentencing. Like the trial, the sentencing was being held in the main lecture hall of the old Infantry School because the city’s regular courtrooms could not accommodate the huge crowds. Karl had been unable to arrange a seat inside; nor, apparently, had Ernst. Both had to be content to stand outside under the bright midday sky and wait for the news along with the rest of their fellow citizens.

“I can’t say I’m surprised to see you here,” Ernst said as they shook hands.

“Nor I you. I suppose you find all this amusing.”

“Quite.” He pointed with his cane. “My, my. Look at all the people.”

Karl had already studied them, and they upset him. Thousands of Germans from all over the country swarmed around the large brick building, trying in vain to get into the courtroom. Two battalions of Green Police were stationed behind barbed wire barriers to keep the crowds at bay. During the twenty-five days of the trial, Karl had moved among them and had been horrified at how many spoke of Hitler in the hushed tones of adoration reserved for royalty, or a god.

Today the women had brought bouquets of flowers for their god, and almost everyone in the huge throng was wearing ribbons of red, white, and black—the Nazi colors.

“He’s a national figure now,” Ernst said. “Before the putsch no one had ever heard of him. Now his name is known all over the world.”

“And that name will soon be in jail,” Karl said vehemently.

“Undoubtedly. But he’s made excellent use of the trial as a national soap box.”

Karl shook his head. He could not understand why the judges had allowed Hitler to speak at such length from the witness box. For days—weeks—he went on, receiving standing ovations in the courtroom while reporters transcribed his words and published them for the whole country to read.

“But today it comes to an end. Even as we speak, his sentence is being pronounced. Today Adolf Hitler goes to prison for a long, long time. Even better: Today he is deported to Austria.”

“Jail, yes,” Ernst said. “But I wouldn’t count on deportation. He is, after all, a decorated veteran of the German army, and I do believe the judges are more than a little cowed by the show of support he has received here and in the rest of the country.”

Suddenly shouts arose from those of the huge crowd nearest the building, followed by wild cheering as word of the sentencing was passed down: five years in Landau Prison…but eligible for parole in six months.

“Six months!” Karl shouted. “No, this can’t be! He’s guilty of treason! He tried to overthrow the government!”

“Hush, Karl,” Ernst said. “You’re attracting attention.”

“I will not be silenced! The people have to know!”

“Not these people, Karl.”

Karl raised his arms to the circle of grim faces that had closed about him. “Listen to me! Adolf Hitler is a monster! They should lock him up in the deepest darkest hole and throw away the key! He—”

Sudden agony convulsed through his back as someone behind him rammed a fist into his right kidney. As Karl staggered forward another man with wild, furious eyes and bared teeth punched him in the face. He slumped to the ground with cries of “Communist!” and “Jew!” filling his ears. The circle closed about him and the sky was shut out by enraged, merciless faces as heavy boots began to kick at his back and belly and head.

Karl was losing his last grip on consciousness when the blows suddenly stopped and there was blue sky above him again.

Through blurry eyes he saw Ernst leaning over him, shaking his head in dismay.

“Good God, man! Do you have a death wish? You’d be a bloody pulp now if I hadn’t brought the police to your aid!”

Painfully, Karl raised himself on one elbow and spit blood. Scenes from the dark vision began flashing before his eyes.

“It’s going to happen!” he sobbed.

He felt utterly alone, thoroughly defeated. Hitler had a national following now. He’d be back on the streets and in the beer halls in six months, spreading his hatred. This trial wasn’t the end of him—it was the beginning. It had catapulted him into the national spotlight. He was on his way. He was going to take over.

And the vision would become reality.

“Damn you, Ernst! Why did you have to knock off my aim?”

“I told you, Karl. It was an accident.”

“Really?” During the months since that cold fall day, Karl’s thoughts had returned often to the perfectly timed nudge that had made him miss. “I wonder about that ‘accident,’ Ernst. I can’t escape the feeling that you did it on purpose.”

Ernst’s face tightened as he rose and stood towering over Karl.

“Believe what you will, Karl. But I can’t say I’m sorry. I, for one, am convinced that the next decade or two will be far more entertaining with Herr Hitler than without him.” His smile was cold, but his eyes were bright with anticipation. “I am rather looking forward to the years to come. Aren’t you?”

Karl tried to answer, but the words would not come. If only Ernst knew…

Then he saw the gleam in Ernst’s eyes and the possibility struck Karl like a hob-nailed boot: Perhaps Ernst does know.

Ernst touched the brim of his hat with the silver head of his cane. “If you will excuse me now, Karl, I really must be off. I’m meeting a friend—a new friend—for a drink.”

He turned and walked away, blending with the ever-growing crowd of red and white, black and brown.