The Vengeance of Rome

As soon as Doctor Hugenberg had personally interviewed him in London, our Old Shatterhand finally arrived to join us. Desmond Reid was in fact an excellent version of just the tight-lipped, arrogant type of Englishman I described. He wore blazers and perfect flannels, an Ascot stock at his neck rather than a tie. His square-jawed good looks and pencil-thin moustache were typical of the contemporary English actor.

Reid had already made several films with Hitchcock in Germany and England. He had featured in a number of ’Sexton Blake’ serials as Blake’s arch-enemy, the albino Count Zenith. Indeed, I admired him in the movie version of The Affair of the Runaway Prince where he had interpreted the role of Blake’s most deadly opponent, who played the violin, smoked opium and took to crime to relieve his ennui. He also appeared in The Mystery of the Silent Death, Silken Threads and The Great Office Mystery, all of them two-reelers never quite achieving the same standard and later eclipsed by Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror, with a different actor playing Blake. A rapidly rising star, Desmond Reid had a classic profile and might have been a German of the higher type. Visually, he was a perfect ‘Surehand’, while his acting was adequate, as was his French and German.

We were introduced at Hugenberg’s party celebrating the re-election of President Hindenburg and the defeat of Adolf Hitler which had, by all accounts, sent the Führer into another of his retreats listening to Franz Lehar, reading Edgar Wallace, and no doubt exercising the dog whip he carried to impress Germans with his mastery of men.

Reid had just finished a job in Potsdam, where UfA had a large studio. He had played a cruel commissar in a film set against the background of the Russian Civil War, a historical nonsense, but Reid’s screen presence was unquestionable. For the sake of art, I was willing to enjoy a superficial friendship with him. Hugenberg also found him politically sympathetic, for though strongly pro-German, Reid was a great imperialist, a supporter of king and country. He thought the German war would never have been fought if the Kaiser hadn’t panicked at the socialist victories of 1914.

Hugenberg and Reid agreed energetically that the wedge driven through their great natural alliance by Edward VII’s flirtation with the French had thrown the world into chaos. Red Republicanism was the certain progeny of that bastard union arranged merely so the Prince of Wales should not lose the services of Parisian whores. For that he turned on his own German relatives. His own cousins and siblings. Later, Reid would become a famous correspondent for the Daily Mail and would frequently write articles in support of the Fascist cause.

Mussolini was Reid’s hero. The actor had known Pound, Fiorello and D’Annunzio. He had been with them in Trieste. They were all great romantics of the old school, he said. ‘Worthy to stand side by side with Marat or Browning.’ He spoke with warm admiration of those wild idealists whose actions had done so much to improve the morale of the Italian people.

By rights we should have been great friends, but there was some weakness in Reid I could not identify. He tended to avoid me, as if he guessed I could tell there was something fishy about him. I wondered if Reid were his real name. It also occurred to me that, despite his blond good looks, he might carry another secret. As Ludecke points out in his book, the worst kind of anti-Semite is that wretched creature the Halb-Jude, or even a full Jew who so hates himself he is more vitriolic in his expressions of disgust than any Rosenberg or Streicher.

My own understanding of the Jewish problem is, like Strasser’s, entirely rational. I have nothing against them as a people. I merely believe they thrive best in their own desert fiefdoms or the heightened atmosphere of stage, salon and studio! Just as my blood sings to the winds from the steppe and the roaring of the Dnepr, so must theirs long for souk and sand dune.

Reid was no fan of Goebbels, Göring or Hitler but we had a mutual acquaintance in Otto Strasser. He approved of the Strassers and of Röhm. He understood Röhm’s reputation as a swaggering adventurer was merely a persona the Stabschef adopted. At heart Röhm was an honourable member of the Reichswehr and wanted nothing more than to be reunited with the army he regarded as a mother and father. He was the right kind of Nazi, said Reid, basically a gentleman. ‘Those others, including Himmler, are gangsters with one solution for all problems.’ He drew his fingers across his throat. ‘Simple, effective, but bad economics. It would be foolish to deny a country the benefits which Jews can bring. Cromwell understood that. We should profit from the positive side, as in mathematics and music, but they should not be allowed disproportionate political influence.’ There should be citizenship requirements. An oath. Even in America, the cradle of liberty, Jews did not stand for Congress.