Стив Берри - The Kaiser's Web--A Novel

The battle itself kept a person sharp.

No dictator had ever survived such scrutiny.

The nature of absolute power demanded absolute loyalty, and unfortunately an ability for self-examination was simply not inherent in either autocracy or the personality of someone able to achieve absolute power. The thin air at the top of the mountain seemed to always cloud the brain.

He sliced another apple wedge and smiled.

The trick was not to fall victim.

He imagined what it must have been like to stand on the balcony of the Berghof, the Alps in the distance, Hitler musing about his latest idea, uniformed officers milling about enjoying Rhineland wine and French champagne, hanging on his every word. What a romantic notion. But after all, that was the whole idea. The Nazis had been good at coating the rotten with a supposedly sweet veneer. And Hitler was the master. Failed putsch leader in 1923. Jailed 1924. Reich chancellor 1933. Total power acquired 1934.

An unparalleled political rise. Textbook.

One to be envied.

From 1933 to 1941 practically everything Hitler undertook he achieved. In 1935 he thumbed his nose at the Treaty of Versailles by conscripting a military. In 1936 the remilitarization of the Rhineland breached the Treaty of Locarno. In 1938 Austria was incorporated without a single bullet fired and the Sudeten territories acquired with France and England’s permission. In 1939 Bohemia, Moravia, and Memel were occupied, and Poland defeated. In 1940 Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France were conquered with little effort. In 1941 Greece and Yugoslavia were overrun.

By 1942 a total domination of Europe.

Remarkable for a man with strange ideas, mainly borrowed from others, who did nothing more than proclaim the end of despair.

He tossed the apple core into a nearby metal trash bin.

If only Hitler had stopped.

He folded the blade and pocketed the knife.

Twelve years of victories. Followed by four years of utter failure. What changed? Certainly not Hitler. He remained single-minded until the moment he pulled the trigger in the bunker. No. What changed was the strength of his opponents. Sadly, the man was only able to defeat that which was already wavering, nearly dead. His gift, though, the true sense of Adolf Hitler, was his uncanny ability to spot those weaknesses.

And that was what needed to be learned from the Nazis.

The weakness of others would be his ally.

He thought about the new unified Germany. Three hundred and fifty-seven thousand square kilometers, half farmland, a third forest. Eighty-three million people. Eighty-one percent German, the rest a mixture. Ninety-nine percent literate. A gross national product in the trillions of euros. Less than 2 percent inflation, and just over 5 percent unemployment.

So what was the weakness to be exploited?

That 19 percent of foreigners.

A mixture of other Europeans, Asians, Africans, Turks, and Arabs.

A basic underlying hatred for foreigners was already there, and only fuel was needed to spark the fire. Hitler was smart to stimulate a hatred of Jews. He stoked a hatred that stretched back to Martin Luther and the Reformation. But in the 21st century, in order to reap the benefits from a collective hate, he would have to take a new approach.

The enemy carefully chosen.

Turks were part of that 19 percent and, by and large, were Muslims. Not only did a few of those inherently hate Jews, their presence further diluted the political strength of the scant few Jews who remained within Germany.

No German today need hate a Jew.

Some of the Turks seemed more than willing to take up the cause.

So let them.

Germany no longer possessed the military might to enforce an ideology. But what he knew to be true—what he must never forget—was that the German psyche had evolved little since the last war. For appearances’ sake his new German state must suppress anti-Semitism, for the world would tolerate nothing less. Yet the same world community never seemed to mind when the Arab was oppressed.

So the course was clear.

Let the Turks hate the Jews and let the Germans hate the Turks. If those two extremes were played off each other skillfully, power could be both obtained and maintained. But to achieve success he needed to learn from one more of Hitler’s mistakes. While dominating Germany, playing off the populace’s fears, pitting one group against the other, Hitler managed to drain the nation of one of its most precious resources.

Knowledge.

One-third of all the world’s Nobel laureates prior to World War I came from Germany. But most fled after 1933 to America and Britain. Physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians, biochemists, engineers. Twenty-seven eventual Nobel Prize winners. The names became a roll call of the world’s best. Fermi, Born, Bloch, Haber, Einstein, Stern, Pauli, Teller. America developed the bomb, went to the moon, and became a superpower thanks, in part, to German minds.

That mistake could not be repeated.

The world would not flourish while Germany languished.

He smiled to himself.

No.

The world, in fact, had made its own share of mistakes.

German mass murderers implemented the Holocaust with machine precision. Yet what happened? Within ten years of the war ending German sovereignty was restored and the country was rebuilt with Allied money. Many of those who aided and abetted the atrocities were enlisted to fight Stalin. The German nation should have been extinguished, erased from the map, its territory absorbed by its neighbors with no chance of any resurrection. But instead the threat of communism took precedence over common sense, and Germany was allowed to survive.

How utterly foolish.

He knew what had to be done.

Start the fire. Fan the flame. Watch the blaze. But never allow it to burn out of control.

And keep in mind what Goebbels said.

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe.

He stared ahead.

The subterranean labyrinth ended at a solitary wooden door. He always completed his visit here.

Beyond was true inspiration.

He stepped forward, grasped the iron handle—

And prepared himself.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

FREE STATE, SOUTH AFRICA

3:50 P.M.

Cotton hoped Cassiopeia was waiting for him at the café. He was encouraged by the image of Albert Herzog he’d seen in the museum. At least they were in the right place and on the right track.

He kept walking and stared up into a flawless cerulean sky. The sun was starting its westward retreat, illuminating the nearby mountains in brilliant hues of crimson and taupe. He turned a corner and confronted a cloud of dust, oil, and fumes from three trucks that lumbered past, chasing the sun, heading out of town for the main highway.

He caught sight of the Range Rover still parked beyond the café. The sidewalks were filled with a variety of Africans, Indians, and whites, most of the men in lightweight tropical clothes, some with sun helmets, the women in colorful dresses below the knees. The chatter was open and friendly, some English, some Afrikaans. He understood no Afrikaans. It was a difficult dialect, resembling Dutch in the way that slang resembled English, a synthetic substitute borrowing from Flemish, French, and German.

He focused again on the street and suddenly spotted Cassiopeia. She appeared from an alcove under a covered stoep, across the street, and waved him off.

“Go back. Around the corner and wait,” she called out.

It took an instant for him to digest her command, and before he could say or do anything she disappeared into the shadows. He turned and retreated around the corner, following her instruction, trying not to attract attention. He allowed a couple of women with shopping bags to pass, then eased back to the corner and peered around the edge of a low-slung stone building.