Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

"We have plenty of Aryan artists, and no need to seek anything from that polluted race. What is the man’s name?"

"Hansi Robin."

"Robin? Robin?" repeated Hitler. "Isn’t he the son of that notorious Schieber, Johannes?"

"Yes, mein Führer."

"She should divorce him." The great man turned upon Lanny. "My young friend, you should not permit such a thing to continue. You should use your authority, you and your father and the other men of the family."

"It happens that the couple are devoted to each other, Herr Reichskanzler; also, she is his accompanist, and is now playing with him in a tour of the United States."

"But, Herr Budd, it is sordid and shameful to admit considerations of worldly convenience in such a matter. Your sister is a Nordic blond like yourself?"

"Even more so."

"Yet she gets upon public platforms and advertises her ignominy! And think of what she is doing to the future, the crime she commits against her children!"

"They have no children, Herr Reichskanzler. They are devoting their lives to art."

"It is none the less an act of racial pollution. Whether she has children or not, she is defiling her own body. Are you not aware that the male seminal fluid is absorbed by the female, and thus her bloodstream is poisoned by the vile Jewish emanations? It is a dreadful thing to contemplate, and if it were a sister of mine, I would rather see her dead before my eyes; in fact, I would strike her dead if I knew she intended to commit such an act of treason to her race."

"I am sorry, Herr Reichskanzler; but in America we leave young women to choose their own mates."

"And what is the result? You have a mongrel race, where every vile and debasing influence operates freely, and every form of degradation, physical, intellectual, and moral, flourishes unhindered. Travel that highway into hell, if you please, but be sure that we Germans are going to preserve our purity of blood, and we are not going to let ourselves be seduced by tricky words about freedom and toleration and humanitarianism and brotherly love and the rest. No Jew-monster is a brother of mine, and if I find one of them attempting to cohabit with an Aryan woman I will crush his skull, even as our Stormtrooper song demands: Crush the skulls of the Jewish pack! Pardon me if I speak plainly, but that has been my life’s habit, it is the duty which I have been sent to perform in this world. Have you read Mein Kampf?"

"Yes, Herr Reichskanzler."

"You know what I have taught in it: The Jew is the great instigator of the destruction of Germany. They are, as I have called them, true devils, with the brain of a monster and not that of a man. They are the veritable Untermenschen. There is a textbook of Hermann Gauch, called Neue Grundlage der Rassenforschung, which is now standard in our schools and universities, and which tells with scientific authority the truths about this odious race. Our eminent scientist classifies the mammals into two groups, first the Aryans, and second, non-Aryans, including the rest of the animal kingdom.

You have seen that book, by chance?"

"I have heard it discussed, Herr Reichskanzler."

"You do not accept its authority?"

"I am not a scientist, and my acceptance or rejection would carry no weight. I have heard the point raised that Jews must be human beings because they can mate with Aryans and Nordics, but not with non-human animals."

"Dr. Gauch says it has by no means been proved that Jews cannot mate with apes and other simian creatures. I suggest this as an important contribution which German science can make—to mate both male and female Jews with apes, and so demonstrate to the world the facts which we National Socialists have been proclaiming for so many years."

The master of all Germany had got started on one of his two favorite topics, the other being Bolshevism. Again Lanny observed the phenomenon that an audience of three was as good as three million. The sleepy look went out of the speaker’s eyes and they became fixed upon the unfortunate transgressor in a hypnotic stare. The quiet voice rose to a shrill falsetto. Something new appeared in the man, demonic and truly terrifying; the thrust-out finger struck as it were hammer blows upon Lanny’s mind. A young American playboy must be made to realize the monstrous nature of the treason he was committing in condoning his sister’s defilement of the sacred Aryan blood. Somehow, at once, the evil must be averted; the man who had been commissioned by destiny to save the world must prove his power here and now, by bringing this strayed sheep back into the Nordic fold. "Gift!" cried the Führer of the Nazis. "Poison! Poison.'"

Back in New England, Lanny’s Great-Great-Uncle Eli Budd had told him the story of the witch-hunt in early Massachusetts. "Fanaticism is a destroyer of mind," he had said. Here it was in another form—the terrors, the fantasies born of soul torment, the vision of supernatural evil powers plotting the downfall of all that was good and fair in human life. Adi really loved the Germans: their Gemütlichkeit, their Treue und Ehre, their beautiful songs and noble symphonies, their science and art, their culture in its thousand forms. But here was this satanic power, plotting, scheming day and night to destroy it all. Die Juden sind schuld!

Yes, literally, the Jews were to blame for everything; Hitler called the roll of their crimes for the ten thousandth time. They had taught revolt to Germany, they had undermined her patriotism and discipline, and in her hour of greatest peril they had stabbed her in the back. The Jews had helped to shackle her by the cruel Diktat of Versailles, and then had proceeded to rivet the chains of poverty upon her limbs. They had made the inflation, they had contrived the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, the systems of interest and reparations slavery; the Jewish bankers in alliance with the Jewish Bolsheviks! They had seduced all German culture—theater, literature, music, journalism. They had sneaked into the professions, the sciences, the schools, and universities—and, as always, they had defiled and degraded whatever they touched. Die Juden sind unser Ungluck!

This went on for at least half an hour; and never once did anybody else get in a word. The man’s tirade poured out so fast that his sentences stumbled over one another; he forgot to finish them, he forgot his grammar, he forgot common decency and used the words of the gutters of Vienna, where he had picked up his ideas. The perspiration stood out on his forehead and his clean white collar began to wilt. In short, he gave the same performance which Lanny had witnessed in the Bürgerbraukeller of Munich more than a decade ago. But that had been a huge beerhall with two or three thousand people, while here it was like being shut up in a small chamber with a hundred-piece orchestra including eight trombones and four bass tubas playing the overture to The Flying Dutchman.

Suddenly the orator stopped. He didn’t say: "Have I convinced you?" That would have been expressing a doubt, which no heaven-sent evangelist ever admits. He said: "Now, Herr Budd, go and do your duty. Make one simple rule that I have maintained ever since I founded this movement—never to speak to a Jew, even over the telephone." Then, abruptly: "I have other engagements and have to be excused."

The three quickly said their adieus; and when they were outside, Lanny, in his role of secret agent, remarked: "No one can wonder that he stirs his audiences."

When he was back in the hotel with his wife and mother, he exclaimed: "Well, I know now why Göring is keeping Freddi."

"Why?" they asked, with much excitement.