The Vengeance of Rome

We ate a large and leisurely dinner. Then Röhm’s handsome young chauffeur arrived to tell us our car was ready. The Stabschef was already a little tipsy. He sang some sentimental Spanish song he had learned in Bolivia. He opened his window so he could breathe in the rich, scented air of the Bavarian capital. ’Ah! One has to acknowledge the pleasures of peace. But they are only won through the hardships of war.’

We stopped at my hotel where I packed a small bag containing a change of clothes, a box of cocaine and some papers I preferred to keep with me. Then we were off, driving through the haze of twilight into what seemed to me at that moment an infinitely rosy future.

I was glad of the chance to see a little of the surrounding countryside. The neat, well-ordered Bavarian fields were a symbol of the best of Germany. The German’s natural sense of harmony is only occasionally perverted by experiments in social democracy. It is expressed most finely in his music and his mathematics. They are masterly bookkeepers. They exemplify so many of our Christian virtues. They are the Yankees of Europe. Sometimes, of course, they can exercise those virtues a little too fully, as with their generosity towards the Turks.

Röhm, as usual, was stimulating company. He continued to drink a little more than he should, but the stress of his responsibilities was tremendous. The only expression of his insobriety was a somewhat looser and coarser tongue. He loved to relax in manly company, to forget for a few hours the ‘Prussian manners’ he was forced to cultivate as an officer, a member of the Reichstag and a senior senator in the Bavarian parliament. He spoke of his frustrations with the bloodless, feeble self-abusers he was forced to keep company with, of the protocol he had to observe so as not to let Hitler down. He would do nothing, he said, to damage Hitler’s chances of becoming Chancellor.

Feeling a little abandoned by Il Duce and wondering about my future, I was quietly pleased to have Röhm’s friendship. While never wielding power for himself, only for the common people for whom he held it in trust, he was the most powerful man in Germany. Without him, Hitler and Strasser could not move. Without his troops, Hindenburg and the old guard could outlast and, if necessary, outfight Hitler. It crossed my mind more than once that I was becoming close friends with the future Duce of Germany, but at that time I had no intimation of Röhm’s real secret.

I relaxed beside him in the staff car’s huge back seat while he discussed the work of German painters he admired and asked if they had their American equivalents. I said that the ‘folkish’ movement had taken odd forms in America. The favoured art form these days was the cinema. Even great artists worked for Hollywood, designing sets and drawing storyboards. He had visited Los Angeles on his way back from Bolivia and had been impressed by the palm trees and the lovely houses. How surprising things were there! How German! With a touch of North Africa. A friend of his was over there. Did I know Ludecke? He was a good Nazi. I had to tell him that my own political links in America were with the Ku Klux Klan. Sadly, I added, the Klan had been taken over by opportunists, its original ideals forgotten.