Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

Lanny had heard enough names, and began tapping vigorously in his turn. "Wohin gehen wir?" The answer was: "Munich Police Prison." When he asked: "What for?" the little Jew didn’t have to do any tapping. He just shrugged his shoulders and spread his two hands, the Jewish way of saying in all languages: "Who knows?"

IN THE city jail of Munich Lanny was treated like anybody else; which was a great relief to him. He was duly "booked": his name, age, nationality, residence, and occupation—he gave the latter as Kunstsachverständiger, which puzzled the man at the desk, as if he didn’t get many of that kind; with a four days' growth of brown beard Lanny looked more like a bandit, or felt that he did. He was, it appeared, under "protective arrest"; there was grave danger that somebody might hurt him, so the kindly Gestapo was guarding him from danger. By this device a Führer with a "legality complex" was holding a hundred thousand men and women in confinement without trial or charge. The American demanded to be allowed to notify his consul, and was told he might make that request of the "inspector"; but he wasn’t told when or how he was to see that personage. Instead he was taken to be fingerprinted, and then to be photographed.

All things are relative; after a "black cell" in Stadelheim, this city jail in the Ettstrasse seemed homelike and friendly, echt suddeutsch-gemütlich . In the first place, he was put in a cell with two other men, and never had human companionship been so welcome to Lanny Budd. In the next place, the cell had a window, and while it was caked with dust, it was permitted to be open at times, and for several hours the sun came through the bars. Furthermore, Lanny’s money had been credited to his account, and he could order food; for sixty pfennigs, about fifteen cents, he could have a plate of cold meat and cheese; for forty pfennigs he could have a shave by the prison barber. For half an hour in the morning while his cell was being cleaned he was permitted to walk up and down in the corridor, and for an hour at midday he was taken out into the exercise court and allowed to tramp round and round in a large circle, while from the windows of the four-story building other inmates looked down upon him. Truly a gemütlich place of confinement!

One of his cell-mates was the large business man who had been his fellow-passenger in the Grüne Minna. It turned out that he was the director of a manufacturing concern, accused of having violated some regulation regarding the payment of his employees; the real reason, he declared, was that he had discharged an incompetent and dishonest Nazi, and now they were going to force him out and put that Nazi in charge. He would stay in prison until he had made up his mind to sign certain papers which had been put before him. The other victim was a Hungarian count, who was a sort of Nazi, but not the right sort, and he, too, had made a personal enemy, in this case his mistress. Lanny was astonished to find how large a percentage of prisoners in this place were or thought they were loyal followers of the Führer. Apparently all you had to do in order to get yourself into jail was to have a quarrel with someone who had more influence than yourself, then you would be accused of any sort of offense, and you stayed because in Naziland to be accused or even suspected was worse than being convicted.

Lanny discovered that having been in a "black cell" of Stadelheim for three days and four nights had made him something of a distinguished person, a sort of Edmond Dantes, Count of Monte Cristo. His cell-mates fell upon him and plied him with questions about what he had seen and heard in those dreadful underground dungeons. Apparently they knew all about the killings; they could even tell him about the courtyard with a wall against which the shooting was done, and the hydrant for washing away the blood. Lanny could add nothing except the story of how he had lain and listened; how many drum-rolls and volleys he had heard, and about the man who had argued and protested, and Lanny’s own frightful sensations. It was a relief to describe them, he found; his Anglo-Saxon reticence broke down in these close quarters, where human companionship was all that anybody had, and he must furnish his share of entertainment if he expected others to furnish it to him.

Newspapers had been forbidden in the prison during this crisis; but you could get all sorts of things if you had the price, and the Hungarian had managed to secure the Münchner Zeitung of Monday. He permitted Lanny to have a look at it, standing against the wall alongside the door, so as to be out of sight of any warder who might happen to peer through the square opening in the door; if he started to unlock the door Lanny would hear him and slip the paper under the mattress or stuff it into his trousers. Under these romantic circumstances he read the flaming headlines of a radio talk in which his friend Joseph Goebbels had told the German people the story of that dreadful Saturday of blood and terror. Juppchen had been traveling about the Rheinland with the Führer, dutifully inspecting labor-camps, and he now went into details, in that spirit of melodrama combined with religious adoration which it was his job to instill into the German people. Said crooked little Juppchen:

"I still see the picture of our Führer standing at midnight on Friday evening on the terrace of the Rhein Hotel in Godesberg and in the open square a band of the Western German Labor Service playing. The Führer looks seriously and meditatively into the dark sky that has followed a refreshing thunderstorm. With raised hand he returns the enthusiastic greetings of the people of the Rheinland … In this hour he is more than ever admired by us. Not a quiver in his face reveals the slightest sign of what is going on within him. Yet we few people who stand by him in all difficult hours know how deeply he is grieved and also how determined to deal mercilessly in stamping out the reactionary rebels who are trying to plunge the country into chaos, and breaking their oath of loyalty to him under the slogan of carrying out a Second Revolution. "

Dispatches come from Berlin and Munich which convince the Führer that it is necessary to act instantly; he telephones orders for the putting down of the rebels, and so: "Half an hour later a heavy tri-motored Junkers plane leaves the aviation field near Bonn and disappears into the foggy night. The clock has just struck two. The Führer sits silently in the front seat of the cabin and gazes fixedly into the great expanse of darkness."

Arriving in Munich at four in the morning they find that the traitorous leaders have already been apprehended. "In two brisk sentences of indignation and contempt Herr Hitler throws their whole shame into their fearful and perplexed faces. He then steps to one of them and rips the insignia of rank from his uniform. A very hard but deserved fate awaits them in the afternoon."

The center of the conspiracy is known to be in the mountains, and so a troop of loyal S.S. men have been assembled, and, narrates Dr. Juppchen, "at a terrific rate the trip to Wiessee is begun." He gives a thrilling account of the wild night ride, by which, at six in the morning "without any resistance we are able to enter the house and surprise the conspirators, who are still sleeping, and we arouse them immediately. The Führer himself makes the arrest with a courage that has no equal … I may be spared a description of the disgusting scene that lay before us. A simple S.S. man, with an air of indignation, expresses our thoughts, saying: I only wish that the walls would fall down now, so that the whole German people could be a witness to this act. "