what you’re thinking, but in hindsight we were all so foolish. The Germans, the French, the Russians, us: nobody understood what was coming. What were the great ideals we were fighting for? The Germans weren’t so different than we were in 1914. Yes, they violated Belgium’s neutrality to get at France; but they were forced to fight a two-front war. We probably would have done the same if we were buying time to prevent a Russian army from occupying our capital.”
Thornton and Crossley glanced at each other again.
“So, we all made a mess of that one. We made a mess of the peace treaty, and as a result we now have two of the most malicious and murderous ideologies in history to contend with: one in Russia and one in Germany. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about the Russians for the time being, but they’re going to be another mortal threat to us.”
Rory stopped and looked hard, challengingly, at the two men beside him. Crossley nodded as if in reluctant agreement, but Thornton said nothing. He forced a cough, covered his mouth, and broke eye contact.
“As you both know,” Rory went on determinedly, “five years ago, I spent three months on an assignment for your previous employer. I came to London and then went on to Germany to find out information for the War Office. Like so many others, I reported at the time that Hitler and the Nazis were a deadly menace. Nobody in power listened to me or to the scores of others who returned with exactly the same report. I went back to Canada and continued to work in the RCMP. I was promoted to chief superintendent and given command of D Division in Manitoba. The rest you know… What else can I tell you?”
The two Englishmen looked at each other knowingly. “Rory,” said Thornton, “we aren’t fighting the Russians. Why are you so concerned about them?”
“The war’s expanding. Russia just occupied half of Poland. We entered the war because Germany invaded Poland. Do you think for a moment that with Russia and Germany staring at each other across an imaginary frontier in Poland, things will remain settled on that front? Hitler hasn’t moved against France yet. Ask yourselves, why hasn’t he done that? The second most hateful thing to the Nazis after the Jews is Communism. Nazism and Communism are mortal threats to each other. Sooner or later Germany and Russia are going to be at war with one another. I’d take Harris’s theory a step further. Hitler is probably biding his time, deciding whether he’s going to attack us in the west first or go after Stalin in the east.”
Both Crossley and Thornton looked annoyed and uncomfortable.
“Have either of you read Hitler’s book?” Rory asked. “It’s all in there.”
The other men looked sheepish. Thornton spoke. “We don’t read German. I know about it from what I’ve read in the papers. They say it’s not worth reading.”
“It’s not great literature, but it is Mr. Hitler’s philosophy spelled out for you. At the risk of being patronizing, I think you should read it. If our enemy has provided us with a complete overview of his philosophy and a summary of his plans, we should at least take the trouble of reading and studying what he has to say. We’re in the business of estimating what our enemy intends to do and defining our options. Several years ago, every politician, army officer, newspaper editor, and intelligence officer should have read Hitler’s book very closely. How foolish can we be? You can’t even buy a paperback translation of it anywhere; not in Britain, not in Canada, not in America. In some ways, we don’t deserve to win. Instead of making a tough decision, we’ve chosen to believe what we want to believe: that maybe things will somehow work out all right. We’re going to pay a heavy price for that kind of thinking.”
The three of them walked on in silence for a few moments. “Forgive me for getting on my soapbox,” Rory said. “You wanted to know what I think and why I came over. First off, Hitler wants to build a greater Germany, which we’ve already let him do. The next thing he wants is Lebensraum in the east and he wants to create a new German Empire. He wants to dominate Europe and unite all the Germanic peoples in a Third Reich. People like Mr. Chamberlain and France’s Daladier have already given him the first of these. We went to war because of the second, but he’s not finished. He’ll want more than half of Poland, and he’ll go after the third objective soon enough. That’s why I figure we have this period of phoney war. He hasn’t decided what he’s going to do yet: finish off his plans for Lebensraum or conquer his Third Reich.”
Rory pulled his coat collar up higher around his neck. “I’m sure that Stalin hasn’t overlooked that, and we can bet that the Soviet intelligence services have read and translated a copy of Hitler’s book. As for your earlier question about coming to some kind of accommodation with the Nazis, if you think you can be safe living with a violently lunatic Nazi Empire that’s armed to the teeth and eventually extends from Moscow to the English Channel, then by all means let’s cut a deal with Hitler.”
“Very interesting,” said Thornton. “You know, Rory, you do have allies outside, people like Harris and ourselves. There are people around here who think like you do about the Nazis. More people are coming around to your line of thinking every day – people like Winston Churchill. He’s been a voice in the wilderness for ten years; it’s just that Churchill’s not running things. What do you think’s going to happen next?”
“Harris has it right. We have no choice. We dig in here in England and get ready for a long war.”
* * *
“GENTLEMEN, THE REICH’S ENEMIES are larger and physically stronger than our German army, but we are in many ways much better prepared to destroy them. So please, let us make no mistake about it: we will destroy them.”
The man droning on at the podium was Karl Dortinger, one of the National Socialist Party’s founding members. But as far as Reinhold Neumann was concerned, Dortinger’s lecture didn’t have the ring of destiny nor what the papers described as the new Nazi speaking style. Instead, the lecture sounded more like a country parson’s sermon. Nonetheless, it was still a break from the seemingly endless stream of bureaucratic directives read out by senior police officers here at the new SS Police Academy’s Führerschule.
Neumann looked about him. Most of his fellow students were men just like him. They were police volunteers recently inducted into the Schutzstaffel, more popularly known as the SS, the Nazi Party’s most privileged security organization. All the others were intently focused on the elderly party functionary. Neumann and his colleagues sat in the comfortable lecture hall on the third floor of Berlin’s Natural History Museum. The museum’s auditorium was now temporarily being used as the Third Reich’s recently created Security and Police Services Staff College. Natural history, they were told, would now have to wait for the ultimate triumph of National Socialism.
Karl Dortinger, a noncommissioned officer in the German army in the Great War, had been an early convert to the Nazi cause. Over the last three days, Neumann had become used to this sort of ideological intermission sandwiched between more practical lectures. It was the second time they had been exposed to Dortinger’s droning tirade.
The lecture hall was filled to capacity with a hundred middle-ranking police officers from across Germany and Austria. Behind Dortinger was a very large map of Europe, flanked by two swastika flags. Neumann couldn’t help but notice that every time Dortinger looked up from his notes, the stage lights reflected back from his round steel-frame glasses, making him look like one of those hapless characters in an American cartoon. He tried to suppress a laugh.
The good-natured Bavarian officer sitting next to him turned and grinned. “You find this clown as hopelessly boring as I do? That’s reassuring. Look around. Everyone’s pretending to be enthralled by this bullshit.”
Neumann immediately became mildly alarmed and whispered,
