The Vengeance of Rome

Röhm had no time for women except as mothers. The rest were sluts and parasites. He found it hard to be polite to most of them. He said they were a distraction, incapable of higher brain functions. They were natural prey to Jews and other vermin. He had loathed Rosa Luxemburg, whom he described as a hermaphrodite and an abomination. He tolerated the army politician von Schleicher precisely because he understood him to have been involved in the execution of Luxemburg and Leibnitz.

Ultimately, Röhm told me, he saw a time when women would hardly be needed at all, and those we had left could be hardened up like Amazons, as auxiliaries and breeders. Hitler’s weakness for Geli Raubal was a sure sign things were going wrong. Röhm had nothing against his Chief having a sentimental interlude, but Raubal had become an unhealthy obsession and was getting them both into trouble. She was likely to destroy Hitler’s political career. The party couldn’t afford much more scandal around him.

Röhm insisted that the light of his old friend’s life was nothing but a whore. ‘She fucks anything that moves. She’d fuck a turd if it was stiff enough. She’s had two of his chauffeurs behind his back and half the damned SS. Everyone knows about her and that SS fellow Zeiss. Yet Alf won’t hear a word against the bitch. He’s broke because of her. She’s getting him to buy her singing lessons and send her to fucking Vienna to become an opera star! No, Mashi, we really don’t need young Geli around at the moment. I’m all for her going to Vienna to follow her vocation. I know a nice house on Rosenstrasse. They’ll employ her. She can take her pictures with her.’

Röhm, Putzi and Schultz, the Nazi Party treasurer, had been responsible for buying back Hitler’s drawings and letters. The go-between was the ubiquitous Hieronymite priest Father Bernhard Stempfle, a sometime contributor to Völkischer Beobachter and Der Stunner. The letters, Röhm said, were graphic. The photos were steamy. But the drawings were amazing. Better than his usual doodles. Putzi had wondered what kind of man would make a woman pose like that. And he had come to understand about the dog whips they all carried. He was not grateful for the knowledge, he said. It gave him a rather different idea of the Chief.

‘He’s completely addicted to the bitch,’ Röhm complained. ‘And she’s blackmailing him, believe me. She could well have corrupted that seedy priest, though I know for a fact he’s not interested in grown women. The commies will use her, if they can.’

By coincidence that same evening he presented me with a marvellous costume, a fantasy of lace and silk, and said he would be touched if I would wear it for him. Röhmannsvilla was a kind of Hollywood in itself, and I felt secure there. I was never afraid of make-believe in its place. In this case, of course, I had hardly any choice. I indulged him. I love the sensation of silk. I gave myself up to it and did not really mind the pain at the end. ‘Slut,’ he said. ‘You gorgeous little slut.’

I always believed it pure folly to assume that what a consenting adult does in the privacy of his own apartments has any bearing on his public life. No true historian bothers himself with such questions. A man should be judged by his public actions, not on his taste in suits, sex or soup.

Mrs Cornelius, of course, was involved in the Christine Keeler business, though she never went to Cliveden. Mandy Rice-Davies was her good friend, and they often spent afternoons together. ‘The only problem with all o’ that,’ she says, ‘was Chrissy and that loony Schwarze, whatever his name was . . .’

‘Lucky,’ I say.

‘They was both barmy and that messed it up for everyone else. Jack Profumo should ‘ave known better, but there wasn’t much to the rest of ‘em.’