Look Who's Back (13 page)

It was a project which brought me to the verge of tears.

Here, nobody thought of himself. In the true spirit of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice, countless people were compiling all manner of knowledge for the greater good of the German nation, without demanding a pfennig for their labour. It was like a charitable campaign for knowledge, which demonstrated
that even in the absence of the National Socialist Party the German Volk instinctively worked to support its fellow man, even if there was a certain question mark hanging over the expertise of these selfless comrades.

For instance, to cite just one example, I was delighted to note that my vice-chancellor, von Papen, had bragged in 1932 that within two months of my accession to power I would be pushed against the wall until I squeaked. But elsewhere in this Inter-network one could read that von Papen believed this would be accomplished within three months rather than two, and in yet another place the time frame cited was six weeks. Frequently he thought that I would be pushed into a corner rather than against the wall. Or even into a tight spot. And perhaps I was not going to be pushed, but squashed, while maybe the goal was not to have me squeak, but squeal. Ultimately, the bemused reader was left to work out the truth for himself – von Papen had wanted to manoeuvre me in some way into some place within a period of time between six and twelve weeks until I emitted some sort of high-pitched sound. Which was still astonishingly close to the actual intention of that self-appointed “strategist” back then.

“Got an address yet?” Fräulein Krömeier asked.

“I am staying in a hotel,” I said.

“E-mail – electronic post.”

“Send it to the hotel, too!”

“That’s like, a ‘no’ then,” she said, typing something into her computer. “What name shall I register you under?”

I frowned at her.

“Under what name, mein Führer?”

“Under my own,” I said. “Naturally!”

“I imagine that’s going to be like, difficult?” she said, typing away.

“What the devil is so difficult about it?” I asked. “Under which name do you receive
your
post?”

“Vulcania17 at web Dee Eee?” she said. “There we go: your name’s not allowed.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I can try it with a few other providers, but I doubt it’ll make much difference. And even if
were
allowed, I bet one of those nutters has already like, taken it? L.O.L.”

“What do you mean, ‘taken it’?” I asked in irritation. “There is more than one man called Adolf Hitler, just as more than one man has the name Hans Müller. The postal service does not insist that only one man is allowed to be called Hans Müller. One cannot monopolise a name!”

To begin with she appeared slightly confused, then she cast me a look not dissimilar to one I had often received from the ancient Reich President Hindenburg.

“There’s only one of each address,” she said firmly and very slowly – without turning it into a question this time – as if she were worried that I should not otherwise be able to follow her explanation. Then she carried on typing.

“Here we are: Adolf dot Hitler’s gone,” she said. “As is Adolf Hitler all one word and Adolf underscore Hitler, too.”

“What do you mean, ‘underscore’? There’s nothing ‘under’ about me,” I spat. “I am a member of the master race, not some kind of Slav!” But Fräulein Krömeier was already typing again.

“AHitler and A dot Hitler have both gone too,” she announced. “Just Hitler and just Adolf as well.”

“Then we will simply have to get them back,” I thundered.

“You can’t get anything back,” she said petulantly.

“Bormann could! How else would we have got all those houses on the Obersalzberg? Do you really imagine it was uninhabited beforehand? No! People were living there, but Bormann had his ways and means …”

“Would you rather Herr Bormann sorted out your e-mail address?” Fräulein Krömeier asked, sounding anxious and slightly aggrieved.

“I’m afraid Bormann is currently unlocatable,” I conceded. Not wishing to demoralise the troops, I added, “Listen, I’m sure you’re doing your best.”

“O.K. In the meantime I’ll just like, go on?” she said. “Do you mind telling me when your birthday is?”

“20th April, 1889.”

“Hitler89 – gone. Hitler204 – no, we’re not getting anywhere with your name.”

“What impertinence!” I said.

“What about like, choosing another name? I mean, I’m not really called Vulcania17.”

“But this is an outrage! I am not just any old clown!”

“That’s what it’s like on the Internet. Like, first come, first served? You could choose something symbolic?”

“A pseudonym?”

“That sort of thing.”

“Right … I’ll have Wolf, then,” I said grudgingly.

“Wolf on its own? Someone’s bound to have that already. It’s too simple.”

“Then in God’s name make it Wolf’s Lair!”

She typed.

“Gone. You can have WolfsLair6.”

“But I’m not Wolf’s Lair 6!”

“Wait a sec, what else could we do? Hey, what was that thing called: Obersalzbach?”

“Berg! Obersalz
berg
!”

She typed. Then she said. “Oops. I don’t suppose you want Obersalzberg6, do you?” And without waiting for an answer she continued, “Let me try ReichChancellery. That would be good. Well … you can have ReichChancellery1.”

“Not Reich Chancellery,” I said. “Try ‘New Reich Chancellery’. At least I liked that building.”

She typed again. “Bingo!” she said. “It works. L.O.L.” In that brief moment I must have seemed somewhat disheartened; at any rate she felt obliged to reassure me, and said in a well-nigh maternal tone, “Don’t look so sad! You’ll get your e-mail at the New Reich Chancellery. It sounds brilliant!” She paused, shook her head and added, “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I think you like, do that so brilliantly! It’s just so totally convincing? L.O.L. I’ll have to watch out or I might start thinking you like, really were alive then …”

For a minute or so neither of us said a word while she typed more things into the computer.

Then I said, “Who supervises all of this? Surely there is no longer a ministry of Reich propaganda.”

“No-one,” she said. Then she probed me cautiously: “But –
you know all that, don’t you? It’s all part of the act, isn’t it? I mean, that I’ve got to explain everything to you? As if you just turned up yesterday?”

“I am not accountable to you,” I said, somewhat more harshly than I’d intended. “Answer my question!”

“Well,” she said with a sigh. “It’s all pretty unregulated … mein Führer. I mean, we’re not in China. They censor it there.”

“Good to know,” I said.

I
am relieved that I was not around to see the Allied Powers carve up the Reich after the war; it would have cleft my heart. On the other hand, in view of the state of the country back then, I doubt it would have made a grain of difference. Particularly as grain had been in very short supply, as I was able to glean from a variety of documents that had unquestionably been distorted by propaganda. The winter of 1946 was said to have been especially disagreeable, but I was unable to find anything bad about it: the ancient Spartan ideal of education held that relentless hardship produces the strongest children and peoples. A winter of starvation burns mercilessly in a nation’s memory, and ensures that in the future it will think twice before losing another world war.

If one chooses to believe the democratic writers of history, fighting only continued for one pathetic week following my withdrawal from active politics at the end of April 1945. This is a disgrace. Dönitz called off the resistance of the Werwolf partisans, and Bormann’s expensive bunker installations were never properly used. I accept that, no matter how many human lives we sacrificed, we would still have had to count on the Russians flooding Berlin with their hordes. But I had relished
the prospect of reading about a catalogue of nasty surprises devised for the arrogant Americans – now, to my bitter disappointment, I learned that there had not been a single one.

A fiasco.

What I had written in 1924 had proved true once more: by the end of a major war the most valuable elements of the Volk have fallen selflessly at the front, leaving behind only the mediocre and inferior chaff, who then of course consider themselves too good or, paradoxically, even too refined to go underground and prepare a good old-fashioned bloodbath for the Americans.

And I admit to having made a mental note at this point in my deliberations. It is fascinating how, with the benefit of a certain distance, one can see things from a wholly new perspective. Having already established that the best elements of the Volk die prematurely, how could I assume that things should have been any different in this war? I therefore promised myself, “Next war: inferior specimens first!” Then, when it occurred to me that an initial offensive by inferior warriors might fail to achieve the desired outcome, I amended this mental note to “Mediocre first”, then “Best first, but promptly substitute with mediocre and possibly inferior,” only to add, “combine with the quite good and very good”. In the end I scrubbed everything out, noted “Cleverer distribution of the good, mediocre and inferior!” and decided to postpone solving this particular problem. Contrary to what the petty-minded may assume, the Führer is not obliged to come up with answers immediately – he needs only to have them up his sleeve at the
right time. And in this instance let us say that the right time would be at the outbreak of the next war.

I was only faintly surprised by the course of events that followed the miserable surrender by that moron Dönitz. The Allies did in fact squabble over the spoils as fervently as I had predicted – regrettably, however, they did not forget to divide them up. The Russians kept their share of Poland and in return for this generously gifted the Poles Silesia. Led by a group of Social Democrats, Austria broke away into neutrality. Across the rest of Germany, what were essentially puppet regimes – some well-disguised, others less so – were installed by means of democratic-looking processes, under the leadership of such characters as the former convicts Adenauer and Honecker, the corpulent economic soothsayer Erhard or – nor much of a surprise either – Kiesinger, one of those hundreds of thousands of half-hearted fellows who rushed to join the Party in 1933. I must say it gave me a certain satisfaction to read that this bandwagon-jumper was ultimately undone by his joining of the N.S.D.A.P. at the eleventh hour.

Naturally, the victors implemented their old plan of injecting the Volk with an excessive dose of federalism, to ensure perpetual discord within the nation. They created a number of states, called Bundesländer, which from the outset interfered in each other’s affairs and picked to pieces all those resolutions passed by the totally inept federal parliament. The most lasting and senseless harm inflicted by this Allied policy was on my beloved Bavaria. Here, where once I had laid the foundation stone of my movement, the population revered the most cretinous thugs, who aspired to hide their sanctimonious piety
and incorrigible venality by brandishing and emptying large tankards of beer. Their most honest enterprises were occasional visits to brothels.

In the north of the country, meanwhile, Social Democracy had made great headway, expanding its dominion into a vast social–romantic clubhouse, in the process happily frittering away the nation’s wealth. The other characters running this republic were to my mind equally unworthy of mention; they were the usual windbags of sham parliamentary politics, the most nauseating representatives of which – as after the Great War – were appointed chancellor with the greatest urgency. Surely it was one of Destiny’s special “jokes” to have selected the most boorish and doughy of these intellectual dwarves and tossed the so-called reunification of Germany into his expansive lap.

I have to concede that this supposed “reunification” was one of the few first-rate lies propagated by the republic. For how could they call it a proper reunification when essential components – such as the aforementioned Silesia granted to Poland, as well as Alsace-Lorraine or Austria – were missing? One can gauge the simple-mindedness of those monkeys in government by the fact that they were in a position to coax a few run-down square kilometres from the wavering Russians, but not a prosperous region from the French arch-enemy, which would have been a real boon for the nation.

But the greater the lie, the more readily it is believed. Out of gratitude for his heroic “reunification” deeds, that stand-in chancellor was allowed to “govern” the country for sixteen years, four years longer than I. Inconceivable. And the man
looked like Göring after a double dose of barbiturates. The very sight of him was debilitating. For fifteen years I laboured hard to hone the outward appearance of a powerful party; now I discovered that one could just as easily administer this country in a cardigan. I was only pleased that Goebbels was not here to see this. The poor man would be spinning so rapidly in his grave that smoke would be pouring from the soil.

In the intervening years the French arch-enemy had become our closest friend. The fools in charge of the two countries flung their arms around each other’s necks at the slightest opportunity, swearing that never again would they fight each other like real men. This steadfast resolve was cemented in a European alliance, not dissimilar to a gang of schoolboys. The gang seemed to have spent its time arguing over who should be the leader and who had to contribute the most sweets. The eastern part of the continent, meanwhile, had endeavoured to match the inanities committed by the western half, albeit with a difference: arguments were entirely absent in the east, for the be-all and end-all was to drool after the Bolshevist dictators. I felt so ill as I read this that I felt like throwing up on several occasions. The reason the West was able to waste most of its time on childish squabbling was that the American-Jewish financiers, who ruled supreme over there, took care of the more important matters. From the remaining German masses at the end of the war they had secured the services of the acquiescent Sturmbannführer, Wernher von Braun, a highly suspicious opportunist from the day he was born. True to form, he was instantly willing to sell to the highest bidder the knowledge he had gained from developing our V-2 missiles. His rockets
enabled the propulsion of American weapons of world destruction and thus world domination, which confusingly led to the bankruptcy of the Judeo–Bolshevist system in the east in scarcely forty-five years. I cannot conceal the fact that, to begin with, I found this utterly baffling.