The Vengeance of Rome

‘Von Schleicher wants Hindenburg to appoint him Chancellor,’ Röhm told me. ‘But Hitler has to be Chancellor. We’ve held out for that all along. We’ve all told Hitler to stick with it.’ The elections for President were due the following year. Hindenburg would run again but was already too old. Hitler would stand and probably wouldn’t beat him. However, it would increase his public status enormously. The Nazis had no one else of Alf’s potential. They were all working to get him up there. Meanwhile, there was no harm in letting von Schleicher think the Nazis could be persuaded to serve his purposes in the Reichstag.

For all his frankness and understanding, Röhm’s loyalty to Hitler was absolute. By force of arms the Stabschef had the power either to make himself Führer or put his friend Strasser on the throne. Röhm was the hand, he told me. Strasser was the brain. But Hitler was the perceptible soul of the movement. An unstable, youthful soul, perhaps, but what the German people responded to.

Röhm thought of Strasser as a more manly equal. They had the same left leanings. But Röhm understood how the common folk responded with religious ecstasy to Hitler. ‘That’s what the likes of General von Schleicher refuse to think about,’ he said. ‘They all see Hitler as an instrument they can play their own tunes on. Alf is so pliable he always lets us think that. He even believes it himself. He hates to say “no”. But he bides his time, and suddenly you discover to your surprise that you are his instrument! It is a kind of psychic ju-jitsu. Uriah Heep, eh?’

Röhm had read Dickens in Bolivia. He shared with Gregor Strasser an intense love of classical literature. One room in his house was utterly different to the others — a soldier’s cell, containing only the SA blood-flag, a shelf of books and some military paraphernalia. This was where he often chose to sleep alone. Of a trusting disposition, he was not a complete fool and was unhappy about Goebbels’s and Göring’s influence on the leader.

Röhm had better things to do with his time than indulge in petty jealousies and refused to get involved in palace intrigue. The Stabschef had his own constituency. He could afford to stand apart. At his chosen moment millions of iron-hard Storm Troopers would spring to his standard. ‘Goebbels in particular hates me,’ he said, ‘because of the old relationship I had with Hitler. He can’t poison that. He can’t make it not have happened. When all’s said and done he knows it’s me Hitler will call on if anything goes wrong. The little doctor’s scared of me and my ideas. His talk of a “new morality” means getting the chance to fulfil all the grubby little conventional wet dreams he’s ever suppressed. And watch that Göring, too. I know you like him but our valiant captain’s a sadist at root. The sweeter the outside, the harder the inside, as we say in Bavaria.’

Mrs Cornelius disagrees. She remains derisive. She defends the Reichsmarschall and attacks the Stabschef. “E was a nasty little boy-buggerer, that Röhm.’

‘He was an idealistic boy-buggerer,’ I tell her, ‘and that’s the crucial difference.’

Röhm confided his dreams to me as we wandered through the half-completed rooms.

‘I intend to build an army of men who are everything to one another, who have no other loyalties, who are softened neither by the company of women nor the responsibilities of fatherhood. A vast Spartan army ready to defend the nation to the death. It frightens them because we would be what they only talk of being. If Hitler refuses to condemn me, what right have they to do it?’

On reflection he also admitted that Hitler had another good reason for not sounding off about ‘degeneracy’ in the SA.

Röhm was proud that scarcely a senior SA commander was not of his persuasion. In turn they promoted their own. Few realise how close Röhm’s dream was to realisation. The SA must soon take over the training and moral education of the Hitler Youth. Meanwhile, I became an honorary captain in the Foreign Intelligence wing of the SA.

What, I asked, was the Foreign Intelligence wing supposed to do? Who did it consist of? My friend was boisterously amused. ‘You, my dear Max! It’s your department.’

As a sworn follower of my Duce, thus unable to tell Röhm all the details, I pointed out that my job as designer for the Italian aircraft industry might conflict with my new rank. He reassured me. The SA position was an honorary one. I need swear no special oath which would compromise my allegiance to Mussolini. Indeed, the rank was conferred very casually by Röhm. He sent a note to an adjutant one July evening. We were still in that bizarre, half-built classical villa. The smell of the Bavarian pine forest and heavy, damp mountain soil blended with rosewater and Havana cigars. It was up to me, he said, to find my own uniform if I wanted one. He gave me a spare cap.

Röhm had drawn up the plans for his villa long before he left Bolivia. ’I had little else to do with my spare time. The entire country is repressed by the bloody Roman Church. Apart from the gorgeous Felipe. And his father soon put a stop to that. Hitler’s telegram came in the nick of time. I was ready to join the priesthood; I suspected it was the only place I’d find a friend.’ He spoke rather tenderly of the Bolivian boy he had known and of another ‘chum’ with whom he had travelled back to Europe.