War and Remembrance (191 page)

In passing my own final judgment on the man, I must suspend the military historian’s critical detachment, and speak from a soldier’s heart.

His manner of death laid bare his character. A general may fall on his sword when the battle ends, a captain may go down with his ship, but a head of state is different. Was this the act of a head of state in wartime — to desert his office in the hour of his nation’s greatest agony; to leave his disasters and his crimes for others to liquidate; to shoot his dog, poison his
mistress, and seek Lethe at the muzzle of a pistol? His apologists call it “a Roman death.” It was the death of a hysterical coward.

Napoleon in defeat behaved like a proper head of state. For two decades he had made all Europe run red with blood. Yet he faced up to his conquerors, accepted his fate, and purged France of his personal guilt. He was a soldier. Hitler was not, though he talked endlessly about his service in the trenches.

The unconscionable Nuremberg trials proved nothing but our foes’ frustrated rage at the escape of Hitler from their hands. This vengeful and unjust farce condemned a whole nation for the deeds of one vanished man, and hanged and imprisoned the generals who were honor bound to obey him. Had Hitler abdicated, let Dönitz surrender, and offered himself to the fury of the victors, such a show of dignified courage would have done much to redeem his failures. Had he done so, I would not now be writing from a prison cell; of that I am convinced. As a master demagogue Hitler tricked his way to absolute power in Germany; then, as our Supreme Warlord, he betrayed our trust.

We are too vigorous a nation not to recover in time. However badly we lost, the German spirit strides on. All modern military strategy, as well as the world’s hopes for an adequate energy supply, now turn on nuclear fission, a discovery of German science. Americans have walked on the moon, propelled there by an improved German V-2 rocket, in a program administered by German brains. The Soviet Union dominates Europe with its German-organized Red Army, administered on the German model. Captive German science and engineering have equipped Russia to confront the U.S.A. with intercontinental missiles armed with atom bombs.

In world politics, Hitler’s brew of nationalism plus socialism — with its revolutionary egalitarian propaganda, terror apparatus, and one-party dictatorship — is the worldwide political trend. It governs Russia, China, and most developing countries. Perhaps it is nothing to be proud of, but such is the fact. The ideas of the great German philosopher Hegel, popularized and twisted by the converted German Jew Karl Marx, are becoming a new Islam.

In the arts, the Western perverters of form and beauty only echo the avant-garde abstraction and corruption of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s. They are doing nothing now that our clever decadents did not do half a century ago, in the period of anarchy that brought on the Hitler regime.

We Germans have been the bellwether people of the twentieth century, with our triumphs and our tragedies. Though we lost our gallant bid for
world empire, our great marches to the Atlantic, the Volga, and the Caucasus will shine forever in the chronicles of war.

But one historical fact we can never live down: that at the apogee of our national strength we gambled our destiny, and shot our bolt, for the sake of a common poltroon. Napoleon lies in the splendid tomb of the Invalides, a world shrine. Hitler ended as a mess of charred carrion in flaming gasoline. Only Shakespeare could write the appropriate epitaph for him:

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:
In Roon’s view, the early “Dr. Jekyll” Hitler made it to Stalingrad. There he turned into “Mr. Hyde.” I am sure Roon meant this. Stalingrad occurred at the end of 1942. By then Hitler had led his people to commit virtually all the crimes for which the world execrates National Socialist Germany. However, he was still winning the war. He became “an insane monster,” by Roon’s lights, when he began to lose. —V.H.

* * *

W
HAT
startled Pug Henry most was seeing the President stand up. To come on this small new man at Roosevelt’s seat in the Oval Office was itself unsettling, but Truman’s bouncy walk around a desk cleared of the familiar clutter gave Pug the queer sensation that the flow of history had left him stranded in the past; that reality was becoming dreamlike, and that this perky little “President” in a double-breasted suit and bright bow tie was some sort of imposter. Harry Truman shook hands briskly, told his secretary to buzz him the moment Mr. Byrnes arrived, and invited Pug to sit down.

“I need a naval aide, Admiral Henry.” The voice was tart, high, businesslike, the tone flat, midwestern, abrasive; the other American pole from Roosevelt’s creamy Harvard accent. “Now, Harry Hopkins and Admiral Leahy have both recommended you. Would you like the job?”

“Very much, Mr. President.”

“You’re hired. That does our business. Wish all the transactions in this office were that simple.” President Truman uttered a short self-conscious laugh. “Now it’s in the nature of things, Admiral, that the military and the President don’t see eye to eye on lots of things. So let’s get that straight right from the start. Who will you work for — me, or the Navy?”

“You’re my Commander-in-Chief.”

“Good enough.”

“However, if I think you’re wrong in a disagreement with the Navy, I’ll tell you so.”

“All right. That’s what I want. Just remember that the military can be wrong, too. Very wrong!” Truman emphasized his words with short chops of both hands. “Why, the day after I was sworn in, the Joint Chiefs gave me a briefing on the war. Six more months to lick Germany, they said, and another year and a half to beat Japan. Well, here’s old Hitler dead or disappeared, and surrender talks under way, and it’s been all of three weeks. Hey? How about that? Will the Joint Chiefs be just as far off about the Pacific? You’ve just come from there.”

“That sounds like an Army estimate.”

“Now exactly what does that mean? And just remember I’m a field artillery man.”

“General MacArthur projects long land campaigns, Mr. President. But
the submarine blockade and the destruction from the air should make the Japs quit sooner than that.”

“Why, they’re fighting like devils on Okinawa.”

“They do fight hard. But they’ll run out of the wherewithal.”

“Without our invading Honshu?”

“That’s my judgment, Mr. President.”

“Then we won’t need the Russians’ help to finish the war out there?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Resting both hands on the desk before him, Truman stared through glittering glasses at the admiral. Pug’s short assured answers were instinctive returns of the hard straight quizzing. He did not know how else to handle it. This man’s style was not Roosevelt’s at all. FDR would first have made or elicited some mild jokes, inquired about Pug’s family, put him at ease, and made him feel that they might chat all day. Like a new ship’s captain, Truman seemed not quite the real thing because of the change in look and manners. But no matter how long in office he would never acquire Roosevelt’s lordly authority. That seemed plain.

“Well, I hope you’re right,” Truman said.

“I can be as wrong as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. President.”

“What about that big Jap army on the Chinese mainland?”

“Well, sir, you cut off an octopus’s head, and the arms go kind of limp.”

A natural smile softened the President’s stiff expression and relaxed the tight mouth. He sat back, clasping his hands behind his head. “Say, what’s the matter with those Russians, anyway, Admiral? You’ve had duty there. Why don’t they stick to their agreements?”

“Which agreements, sir?”

“Why, any agreements.”

“In my experience they usually do.”

“Is that so? Well, you’re dead wrong, right there. Stalin agreed at Yalta to hold free elections in Poland, and that’s a serious commitment. Now they’re handpicking all the candidates, so as to force in that puppet Lublin government of theirs. Figure they can get away with it because their army’s occupying Poland. Churchill’s up in arms about that, and so am I. I told Molotov just how I felt about it last week. He said he’d never been talked to like that in his life. I said, ‘Keep your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that!’ ”

Truman looked and sounded comfortable now, and quite pleased with himself. As he talked, Pug Henry had flashing memories of the devastated landscape in the Soviet Union, the trips with General Yevlenko, the ruins of Stalingrad, the burned-out German and Russian tanks, the corpses; memories too of trying to deal with Russians, of drinking with them, of hearing their songs and watching them dance. Harry Truman was a straight-shooting
fellow from Missouri. He expected everybody else to behave like prosperous, unbombed, uninvaded, straight-shooting fellows from Missouri. Quite a gap. Roosevelt had understood that gap, and had bridged it long enough to win the war. Maybe nothing more was possible with the Soviet Union.

“Mr. President, you’ve got Russian experts to advise you on that. I’m not one. I don’t know the language of the Yalta agreements. With the Russians, if there’s a single loophole in the language of an agreement, they’ll drive a truck through it. That much you can count on.”

A buzzer, and a voice:
“Mr. Byrnes is arriving, Mr. President.
”

Truman stood up. Again it surprised Pug. This would take getting used to. “I’m told you’ve just been married.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I suppose you’ll want a few weeks for your honeymoon.”

“Sir, I’m prepared to report for duty now.”

Again the smile. Roosevelt’s world-famous smile had been more spectacular, but Pug was beginning to like Truman’s better. It was genuine, with no trace of condescension. Here was a simple smart man, and he was the President, after all; that showed in the confident natural smile. He was still somewhat ill at ease in the presidency, not an unlikable trait. “Well, very good. The sooner the better. Is your bride a Washington lady?”

“No, sir. An Englishwoman.” Truman blinked. “Her father was the British war correspondent, Alistair Tudsbury.”

“Oh, yes. The fat man. He interviewed me once. He stuck to the truth in that article. Didn’t he get killed in North Africa?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll look forward to meeting her.”

Playing with her gloves, Pamela was strolling along the sunny tulip beds near the old Dodge she had acquired. The uniformed White House guards were watching her swaying walk. When she waved the gloves at the admiral, they took their eyes off her. Her look was affectionate and subtly inquiring.

“Where to now?” he said. “That thing at your embassy?”

“If you’re free, darling. And if you don’t mind.”

“Let’s go.”

She drove out of the gate and around toward the north in the old too-quick way, with jerky stops and fast starts at the lights of Connecticut Avenue. The traffic was heavy, the gasoline fumes choking through the open car windows. Again the feeling stole over Victor Henry of being stranded in the past. On Connecticut Avenue what was different from 1939? Franklin Roosevelt had kept the war from this untouched avenue, this untouched capital, this untouched land. Had he been too successful? Did these contented people
swarming in automobiles up and down Connecticut Avenue have any idea of what war was? The Russians knew, and the future required the toughest realism about war.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Pamela said to her silent husband, with a jackrabbit start away from a red light at Dupont Circle.

“I’d be overcharging you. Tell me again what this embassy shindig is about.”

“Oh, just a little reception. Our press corps, the British purchase mission, and such.”

“But what’s the occasion?”

“Frankly, so that I can show you off.” She gave him a sidewise glance. “Okay? Mostly my friends will be there. Lady Halifax is curious to meet you.”

“Okay.”

Pamela took his hand as she drove, and twined cool fingers in his. “It isn’t every little British popsie, you see, who hooks herself an American admiral.”

“And the naval aide to the President.” Pug had held out long enough. By now Rhoda would have asked him.