WHILE NO RED CARPET HAD BEEN rolled out for my arrival at Berchtesgaden I was met by a semi formal—but not unimpressively long—receivingline comprised of such Third Reich luminaries as Albert Speer, Josef Goebbels, Hannah Reich, Hermann Goering (who complimented my "impeccable taste in wearing apparel") Martin Bormann, Richard Strauss, General Jodl, Leni Riefenstahl, Admiral Raeder, Dr. Schmidt and, of course, Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun. It was a memorable, if not altogether enjoyable, experience shaking hands with, among others, Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler and Julius Streicher—some of Nazidom's most fanatical haters of both Jews and Americans.²⁴³ When these brief (no Santa Anas were blowing on that frigid December morning atop the Obersalzberg!) pleasantries ended we all quickly followed our shivering hostess (for some reason²⁴⁴ Fraulein Braun chose to wear one of her flimsier farmgirl costumes) into the Berghof's auditoriumsized livingroom. Having seated ourselves around a huge Christmas tree occupying the center of that vast room we all awaited the Führer's Grand Entrance—which, in keeping with his practice for such "operatic" occasions, he delayed until every last cough, sniffle, throat clearing, furniture creak, scrap of (whispered) conversation and heartbeat had faded to a complete and virtually breathless silence.²⁴⁵

     And, when the Great Man did appear, my emotions were decidedly mixed. It was gratifying to see that Hitler looked more like Charlie Chaplin's (notso)Great Dictator than the Old Testament's Goliath. At least physically the Nazi Superman would be no match for me if our meeting degenerated into a bar room brawl.²⁴⁶ But it was also somewhat depressing to discover that: Just as no man is a hero to his valet, few—if any—of the "living legends" we read (or dream) about measure up at close range to the mythic stature they enjoy from a distance.²⁴⁷ Not that I was seeing this most advertised of modern emperors (Time made him its 1938 Man of the Year and commemorated his 52nd birthday with a cover portrait) minus all his clothes.²⁴⁸  But from what I could observe it seemed plain that, hiding behind Hitler's Führerfaçade and radical revolutionary rhetoric, was a fugitive from the lumpenproletariat^G posing as nothing more grandiose than a reasonably respectable member of Germany's bourgeoisie—and petit at that. In addition to which he was already showing the early signs of the facial ticks, handtrembling and intellectual paralysis which would later be described by the loyalest of his die hard disciples as "those of a man who had become a complete physical, emotional and mental basketcase."²⁴⁹ At no time following his entrance or throughout the exchange and unwrapping of presents which ensued did Hitler take any special notice of my presence. Until, that is, he came to the gift he had addressed to himself in my name—as mentioned in his invitation.

     "How thoughtful of our American guest to put something for me under this tree on such short notice!" he exclaimed.

     "And how clever of him to have done so without any of us noticing!" Eva Braun added with a conspiratorial clapping of her hands.

     "I wonder if what's inside has any diplomatic significance?" Hitler smiled while carefully unwrapping the package. Then, just before opening it, he suddenly stopped. And with a deadly serious expression on his face asked me, "It's not a bomb, is it?"

     "I—are you—that's not—the invita—" I stammered before he burst into a laughter that was joined (if somewhat nervously at first) by everyone. Including me. And all this merriment at my expense only increased when he opened the box and held aloft for all to see—a pair of brown socks embroidered with tiny gold swastikas.

     "Not only my favorite color," Hitler rejoiced, "but decorated with the one design I find more satisfying than any other! And," he added while shaking his finger with mock severity at those who were still laughing, "as Eva will confirm—the most practical of all the gifts I've received today."²⁵⁰

     Any hopes I had Hitler might have been sincere in "coming to my rescue"—or, better yet—was also offended by the way this barbaric division of stolen property²⁵¹ mocked the Christmas spirit inaugurated by those Three Wise Men and their epiphanal tokens of gold, frankincense and myrrh—were dashed when I unwrapped his gift to me and discovered it contained, of all things, the one and only manuscript of Felix Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream! By accepting such a priceless²⁵² artifact—which, for diplomatic reasons, was absolutely unrefusable—I not only increased my embarrassment over the glaring disparity between the presents we exchanged; I was signifying a willingness to participate in this most sordid and criminal of conspiracies!²⁵³  Moreover, as I realized to my further dismay, Hitler was probably killing a third bird with his "Mendelssohn manuscript stone" by ridding Nazified Germany of the "ideologically problematical" evidence that one of its greatest composers was in fact a Jew!

TO HELP "PASS THE TIME" until dinner was served Hitler "entertained" us with "a little homily" he prepared for the occasion, entitled My Reflections On The National Socialist Lessons Which Can Be Learned From Celebrating The Birthday Of What Christians Regard As Their Messiah. Which I have abridged (he rambled on for more than 3 hours!) as follows:

     "Once all the mawkish sentimentality and superstitious claptrap—to say nothing about his martyr's loincloth and halo!—in which the socalled 'Son of God' has been packaged for popular consumption during the last 1900 years is stripped away, what do we discover about the flesh&blood creature who rose to such unprecedented heights of theological super stardom?²⁵⁴  "It seems to me, comrades, that is the question every thinking National Socialist must ask himself as we seek to undo all the damage done to our nation by the JudeoChristian spell under which so many of its citizens have been systematically deGermanized. Let us not make the mistake made by our critics when they ridicule Nazism generally—and its Führer in particular—as nothing more than 'freakish and temporary exceptions' to their rule that: The only history which matters is written by those who further the Holy Cause of the One Man One Vote SocioPolitical Paradise On Earth found in such 'paragons of democratic virtue' as France and Britain. (Both of whose faith in the righteousness of their Egalitarian Crusade has, I might add, been somewhat shaken by our recent whirlwind victories in the west!)

     "Not to mention the United States, of course. Which, in deference to our guest—and because so far at least no serious hostilities have commenced between his country and ours—I think it would be wise if we temporarily left the issue of America's long term strategic interests in abeyance. [This remark was greeted by what began as a smattering of applause and grew into a standing ovation—which I was compelled to acknowledge with a nodding of my head and a facial expression that could have been construed as a telltale smile.]

     "No, my fellow National Socialists! Unlike our bigoted adversaries we must face even the most unpleasant facts. Which in this case means: Before Adolf Hitler made his momentous debut in the back room of a Munich beerhall 20 years ago this humblest of Jews, now known as Jesus Christ, was the single most influential figure who ever appeared on the stage of human events. And why do I make that statement—?"

     "Because he really was the son of God?" Heinrich Himmler replied like an idiot to what was obviously one of the Führer's rhetorical questions.

     "No," Hitler said calmly—after deciding it wouldn't be prudent to chastise his less than supermanly S.S. chief in my presence. "The correct answer is: Because, propagandawise, he was the first man to appreciate the supreme importance of the spoken word in a society dominated by those select few who could read and write! Yes, comrades! The message one reads between all those New Testament lines about 'loving one's neighbor,' 'turning the other cheek' and 'the meek inheriting the earth' concerns that miraculous power to win the hearts and minds of the illiterate masses which only comes from the lips of an orator par excellence! Which, we can safely assume, Jesus Christ must have been since the Jewish and Roman authorities regarded 'the Rabbinical Rabblerouser' as such a serious threat to the continuation of their unholy alliance they crucified him. In addition to which: Knowing as we do that he launched his earthshaking revolution without the benefits of such modern technology as the loudspeaker, the radio and the newsreel—let alone the printing press—one can't help but be impressed by the magnitude of what he accomplished with nothing more than his vocal chords!  For me, then, the secret of Christ's sensational messianic success can only be construed as a spectacular triumph of style over substance. Or, in simpler terms: It isn't what you say but how you say it that really matters.²⁵⁵

     "Because, unfortunately, the Gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke tell us practically nothing about them, we are forced to speculate on the masterful techniques used by this pioneer in the art of public speaking.²⁵⁶ And in doing so one can imagine they were not unlike those I have brought to a state of such perfection even Adolf Hitler's severest detractors²⁵⁷ find themselves—reluctantly to be sure!—enthralled by his virtuoso performances.²⁵⁸ Although, frankly, the precise manner by which I accomplish these spellbinding feats of oratorical magic remains something of a mystery even to me! [This "confession" produced a smattering of nervous—or at least ambivalent—laughter from everyone. Except me of course.]

     "Seriously, comrades, no one is more surprised than I am when watching a newsreel of some speech I've given at a Nuremburg Rally, before the Reichstag or in the Sportspalast to see how the storm of my sounds, gesticulations and posturing²⁵⁹ slowly gathers its emotional fury before climaxing in what can only be—and has been!—described as 'a Grand Finale of nothing less than orgasmic proportions.'²⁶⁰ I can only surmise that my artistic background and cultural sensitivities are somehow responsible for orchestrating these 'ejaculatory cloudbursts.' On the other hand, my closest competitor—that 'Greatest of British Communicators'—Mr. Winston Churchill, is himself an accomplished landscape painter and, hence, no stranger to the aesthetic principles I have applied so brilliantly in a political context. And yet, while Churchill admittedly has a talent for turning a somewhat memorable phrase now and then—for example his 'Some chicken, some neck' and 'Blood, Toil, Tears & Sweat' remarks—he remains a 'lion' whose roar sounds more like that of an angry pussycat! [Spontaneous laughter, applause, cheers and foot stomping from the more jingoist members of his entourage.]

     "In the final analysis—and the earthiest of terms—I suppose one can say that: When it comes to giving an audience a thrill it will never forget, the English Prime Minister lacks my Teutonic sexappeal!"

[At this point Hitler focused those famous "demoniacal" eyes of his directly on me. No doubt testing my mettle to see if, like all the other "diplomatic sheep in wolves' clothing" my "true colors" (all of them one shade of yellow or another) would be exposed by his laserlike gaze. A normally fatal state of affairs which, having prepared myself for such a standard Hitlerian stratagem, I managed to avoid by outstaring him until he blinked and prematurely concluded his lecture by saying:]

     "Which is why every National Socialist can celebrate this holiday with a clear conscious that by so doing he is no way compromising the principles we have articulated regarding all those JudeoChristian fairytales told in that Bible of theirs."²⁶¹

† † †

NOW THAT HITLER HAD TURNED Christmas a Nazi holiday with his "homily," the ensuing banquet—whose otherwise contradictory (if not heretical) implications would have made such a meal hard to swallow—was eaten with an unabashed gusto. The rest of the day and evening was, to my increasing frustration, consumed by a marathon of smalltalk, according to whose unwritten rules, the participants had to avoid topics their Führer might—no matter how remotely—find controversial (ie, the draining of Germany's scientific, medical, financial and pedagogical brain power as "an unintended consequence" of Hitler's Racial Purification Policies²⁶²), distasteful (ie., jokes about homosexuality,²⁶³ "toothbrushstyle" mustaches and postcardpainters suffering from delusions of dictatorial grandeur) or demoralizing (ie., the Luftwaffe's failure to halt RAF bombing raids on Berlin and the erzatzification of everything from apfelstrudel to zwieback).  Even— or especially—any comments about the winter weather were strictly verboten since the "blitzkrieg" campaign launched against Russia had become frozen in its tracks at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow and, most infuriating of all because of its unmistakably portentous name, Stalingrad.²⁶⁴  My contributions to this exercise in conversational tightrope (or minefield) walking were limited to an occasional nod when Hitler addressed one of his rhetorical questions specifically to me; or giving him one of my MonaLisalike smiles in response to some "witty" remark he made about the decadence of modern art, the health and moral benefits of a vegetarian diet or "America's naive belief that all men are actually created equal."

     If, as I began suspecting, the purpose behind this torture by tedium was to deplete what remained of my physical and mental stamina (by this time I hadn't slept a wink in close to 40 hours!) Hitler had failed to reckon with the talent I—like so many other American college students—had acquired for "hibernating" through certain required courses (paleontology 101 being the most egregious example) taught by professors who could have given old Adolf a lesson or 2 in the fine art of boring a captive audience to death.²⁶⁵ In addition to which, this scheme for putting me at a disadvantage sleepdeprivation wise was doubly misguided because the longer these "stagesetting" preliminaries for our meeting went on the less larger than lifesize Hitler's Triumph of the Will image grew in my eyes—and ears.²⁶⁶

NEVERTHELESS, WHEN HITLER SUDDENLY said to me, "Well, Herr Goldberg, here we are—alone at last!" I was somewhat surprised to discover that in fact everyone else had either retired to their Berghof bedrooms or escaped from Berchtesgaden altogether to a world where, as Dr. Goebbels put it, "you no longer had to watch every one of your Ps & Qs as if they were petards upon which you could be hoisted at any moment." Which didn't mean I had been caught with my pants all the way down for what I knew from the outset would eventually be this Moment of Truth. "So it seems,"²⁶⁷ I replied without the slightest hint of drowsiness, stage fright or, for that matter, excessive deference to his rank as Germany's Chancellor and ruler of a European Empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Volga and the Arctic Circle to North Africa.

     "Even in my youth," he confided, "I was a nightowl by nature."

     "Is that so."

     "Yes," Hitler mused, "During my 'Vienna period'—when I struggled all day as a common laborer to earn a crust of bread for supper—after eating it I would spend 8 or 9 hours studying for the entrance exams to the Architectural College. And now, burdened as I am with the innumerable decisions which must be made by a civilian head of state who is also its military CommanderInChief, it is only after normal working hours that my attention can be turned to more visionary matters."

     "These are indeed the times that try men's souls."

     "Speaking of which, I must apologize for the short notice you were given regarding your trip to Berchtesgaden. But, given the urgency of the issues which have arisen between our 2 nations since 11 December, we can't always observe the civilized protocols of former times."

     "Actually I had nothing better to do," I told him truthfully. "Spending Christmas in Moronville isn't something one looks forward to with any particular relish."

     "Judging from what Ribbentrop tells me about the social life in what he calls 'a town so dull it makes Timbuktu seem like Paris' I'm not surprised!" Hitler chortled, before saying: "But, of course, that is precisely what makes Moronia so useful for the kind of clandestine arrangements by which you have been secretly brought to the Obersalzburg."²⁶⁸

     "It's certainly true," I agreed, "the vast majority of people aren't even aware Moronia exists, let alone that for a 1,000 years or more it has served as the secret location where some of Europe's most audacious and successful trial balloons have been launched."²⁶⁹

     "Of course it has!" Hitler said, pounding the armrest of his chair with a fist for emphasis. "Which is why, despite the tenderness of your years²⁷⁰ and apparent lack of policymaking credentials, I remain supremely confident it was destiny that arranged this historic rendezvous between the only 2 men who can—and will!—save Western Civilization from the twin perils of Red and Yellow bolshevism."²⁷¹

     If he was seeking some hint from me that America's newly formed alliance with the U.S.S.R. wasn't the "indissoluble partnership between all those nations who are fighting against the evils of fascism" Roosevelt and Stalin proclaimed it to be—I let the opportunity to do so pass without comment. Following a brief but pregnant pause, Hitler resumed by stating: "I only mentioned the unusual circumstances by which our widely separated paths have finally converged in the event you need some rest before we embark on this historic task lying before us."

     "Thanks for the offer, Herr Chancellor—but I'm ready, able and more than eager to proceed without any further delay," I said to let him know his "attrition" tactics hadn't impaired my physical and mental faculties.

     "Good!" said Hitler enthusiastically as he rose from his chair and pointed toward a door at the other end of the vast livingroom. "Let us adjourn then to my private study—a venue I think you will find more conducive to the intimate and frank discussion fate has chosen us to have regarding the future course of human history." As we strolled the 50 or so yards separating us from our destination the Führer shared a few of his thoughts with me concerning "this secret little hideaway of mine." Including the rather daunting "news" that—with the exception of his faithful housekeeper (who did the cleaning and dusting)—I would be the only other person beside him to set foot in it since the craftsmen who executed Albert Speer's blueprint put their finishing touches on the interior decorations. Added to which he made a not altogether unbeguiling comparison between: "The peace and quiet I've spent a small fortune to acquire by building a sanctum sanctorum inside what was supposed to be my mountaintop retreat, with that you have come by so cheaply as a result of having been posted to Moronville!"

     "That's an irony I would never have appreciated—or dreamed was possible—if you hadn't told me about it!" I joked.

     "Even more ironic than that," he said with a sly grin, "is how closely this highpriced solitude I now enjoy approximates that of my spartan cell in Landsberg prison where I wrote Volume 1 of Mein Kampf—and which the Bavarian government provided me with free of charge!"²⁷²

AFTER OPENING THE DOOR to his private study Hitler invited me to precede him. A gesture I chose not to refuse despite my growing awareness all this "charm" he was turning on was calculated to lure me—quite literally—deeper into his lion's den (or "Eagle's Nest" as the Berghof was known). Upon entering the room I was immediately struck by the dramatic contrast between its human scale and the totalitarianizing effect (deliberately²⁷³) produced by the extravagant dimensions of the one we were leaving. And, while Hitler's hideaway wasn't nearly so claustrophobic as the cramped quarters of that Winnebago in which I wrote Morons Awake!, it was almost filled to its 20 x 30 foot capacity with the books, papers, artifacts and miscellaneous clutter one associates with a creative and/or academic environment. My general impression was I had entered a combination artist's studio, college professor's office and one man thinktank. Among the most memorable of the mental snapshots I began taking are these:

From floor to ceiling the wall to my right was filled with shelves of books whose titles and authors²⁷⁴ reflected (if he actually read them²⁷⁵) not only Hitler's broadminded but, in many cases, antiNazi literary taste.

The wall at the far end of the room was hung with a dozen or more paintings which seemed also to indicate not only a considerable knowledge of art but a surprising eclecticism.²⁷⁶

The room's entire left hand side was furnished with articles of a more practical nature. Some cupboards and filing cabinets, a desk, wardrobe, gasfired hearth and radio/phonograph console²⁷⁷ whose lower half held albums—or "sleeves"—as Hitler called them when proudly informing me they contained "Deutsche Grammophon's experimental Langspiel or 'Long Playing' records."

What really caught my attention, however, was a rack of Dunhill pipes standing on the fireplace mantel beside several tins of Rattrays' Hal O'the Wynde tobacco!²⁷⁸  Not only did this seem to cast doubt on the party line put out by Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry that: "Since becoming Chancellor in 1933 the Führer had given up both smoking and the consumption of alcoholic beverages (except the occasional glass of nearbeer at State dinners) for health reasons—and to set an example for Germany's youth of how National Socialist willpower can triumph over even the most addictive vices;"²⁷⁹ it meant that, at least pipe and tobacco brandswise, Hitler and I shared the same preferences! [Unless, of course, this was yet another of Hitler's insidious ploys to make me feel as if I were more than just a guest at his Mother Of All Fraternity Houses but someone whose aristocratic tastes, elitist propensities and authoritarian inclinations marked him as a candidate for official "cardcarrying" membership in the NASDP.²⁸⁰

THE HIGHPOINT OF THE "GUIDED TOUR" Hitler took me on (while I secretly compiled my mental catalogue of what I had a hunch might someday come in handy²⁸¹) was a custombuilt drafting table that occupied a place of honor in the center of his hideaway. And on which were the plans for what would be "the architectural jewels for Berlin's postwar Imperial Crown"—a matched pair of colossal rotundas.²⁸² One to serve as a Pantheon for Germany's greatest warriors and statesmen—"Frederick I (Barbarosa), Frederick II (the Great), Bismark, etc. and, of course, me."²⁸³ While its twin would house the fatherland's cultural heroes—"Dürer, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Wagner to name but a few." Hitler ended his tour at the fireplace mantel, where he selected a pipe and began charging it with tobacco from one of the Hal O'the Wynde tins.

     "As in your country, Herr Goldberg, we Germans believe a room should be filled with smoke before engaging in the kind of enterprise we are about to undertake. So, please; feel free to light your own pipe. Or, if in the rush to get here it was left behind, you are more than welcome to use one of mine."²⁸⁴

     "Thanks for the offer but that won't be necessary. I never go anywhere without this—"²⁸⁵ I said, showing him the leather pouch whose 4 zippered compartments held my pipe, tobacco, cleaners and combination pick/tamping tool; an item I had remembered to switch from the side pocket of my tweed jacket to the inside one of Goering's suit despite the hectic circumstances surrounding that sartorial transaction.

     "Perhaps you would care to sample some of my tobacco then. It's from Scotland."

     "You don't say!" I replied; indicating his revelation was news to me without perjuring myself in the process of creating what was technically a false impression.

     "Yes!" Hitler declared with that gravity he characteristically displayed before casting his "philosophical pearls" before the schweinerei who refused to take him seriously as Germany's most original thinker since Hegel. "One must frankly admit that, when it comes to some things, the British are unbeatable. If only they would make the same concession to us Germans we could settle our differences like gentlemen instead of engaging in these barbaric—and completely futile as Churchill will learn to his sorrow—hostilities!"

     "Once again, Herr Chancellor, I'm afraid I must respectfully decline your generous offer. In my experience trying a new tobacco in an old pipe can at best be unfair to both and, at worst, leave a man's mind permanently closed against all future attempts to find a blend or mixture better than the one he has come to regard as supremely satisfying." Although this ploy prevented Hitler from pursuing his Hal O'the Wynde²⁸⁶ offer it left me vulnerable to a counteroffer whereby my "new tobacco in an old pipe" objection could be overcome if he suggested "we simply exchange both our pipes and our tobacco." A proposition it would have been difficult for me to refuse without telling him about the extreme queasiness I felt over the prospect of putting that most intimate of his personal possessions into my mouth.²⁸⁷  Added to the profound sense of relief I felt when Hitler didn't exploit this advantage I'd given him, his failure could also be construed as a sign the Führer's reputation for being "a strategic and tactical mastermind who never missed an opportunity to make his adversaries pay the highest possible price for even the smallest of their mistakes" was subject to at least the occasional exception.

     Thereafter, as we stood by the fireplace silently smoking our pipes, the "conversation" between us was conducted via body language²⁸⁸ and—more significantly oneupsmanshipgameplayingwise—eyecontact. Hitler made no secret of the fact he was focusing his (in)famous "superhuman gaze" exclusively on me to see if I—as all those other "gutless wonders"²⁸⁹ had done when they challenged his authority—would fall under its hypnotic spell; or find myself melting into a grease stain like that Neville Chamberlain left behind at Munich after dismissing the idea "a British Prime Minister could be terrified by some jumpedup Austrian corporal with delusions of Napoleonic grandeur."²⁹⁰ And, dear reader, it was only by mustering every last one of my own psychic resources that I managed to outstare him—a feat of willpower equal to, if not surpassing, that which Odysseus demonstrated when resisting what had hitherto been the Sirens' irresistibly seductive song.

HAVING MET HIS MATCH EVILEYESWISE Hitler turned away from me and took his frustration out on his pipe; banging it repeatedly against the fireplace to empty its ashes.²⁹¹ After which he announced dramatically: "Well, my young friend, I think the time has finally come for you and I to make some history!" Whereupon he beckoned me to precede him in the direction of his drafting table. And, when we arrived there, he carefully rolled up his Pantheon plans and replaced them with what had been a black & white map of the world but was now handtinted in watercolors to represent what he solemnly stated: "Is my proposal for dividing the globe—like Caesar's Gaul—into 3 parts. One for the German Empire, indicated by blue. One for the Japanese Empire, indicated by yellow. And, of course, one for our Empire, indicated by red."²⁹²  "As you can see," he went on, "this New Political Order happens to coincide rather nicely with the geographic scheme of things by which this planet of ours naturally partitions itself into a triptych of, more or less, equal dominions. A state of imperial affairs recognized by your President Monroe more than 100  years ago when he—"

     "The Monroe Doctrine was never meant to—"

     "Before we open that can of ancient worms," Hitler ended my interruption with one of his own, "let me call your attention to a futuristic feature on this map you should find interesting as a JewishAmerican. There is a minor departure from the otherwise perfect symmetry of my New World Order colorscheme—"

Book Two Chapter 9   Return to Index

243 Himmler actually grimaced with nausea when his lillywhite Aryan skin came into contact with my "verminous paw."

244 Perhaps out of some "misguided" desire to suffer along with the Wehrmacht troops who, at that moment, were freezing to death in their summer uniforms on the Eastern Front because Hitler had predicted the Russian campaign would be over "in time for the Oktoberfest."

245 If someone had dropped one of those proverbial pins it would have sounded like a clap of (at least distant) thunder.

246 Despite the flab I acquired as a result of my recent overeating problem and sedentary lifestyle I still retained most of the skills and some of the muscles which won me a varsity letter in GraecoRoman wrestling at Princeton.

247 Alas, even my brief (but intense) encounter with President and Mrs. Kennedy did nothing to exempt them from this rule. Their human frailties— the lurid details of which would be revealed after the dust of Dallas had settled (and Camelot was besieged by antiVietnam war pickets)—were obvious to me through even those rosecolored glasses I wore in 1962. Based on my personal experience—which admittedly is limited to only a handful of the giants (including FDR, Churchill, De Gaulle, Stalin, Truman, Einstein, Freud and Picasso) who shook the earth when they strode upon the 20th century's stage—the only figure who came close to equaling his mythical stature in the flesh was, ironically, Richard Strauss. Ironically because: (a) Notwithstanding the superhumanity he claimed for himself in Ein Heldenleben and his Presidency of the Reich Musikkammer—a title Hitler bestowed on him to give his criminal regime "some sorely needed sociocultural respectability"—there wasn't a political, let alone a Nazi, bone in Strauss' body, and; (b) At the time of our meeting I was so completely preoccupied by my thoughts about Hitler I failed to fully appreciate Strauss' monumentality. As for that most saintly of all the men I've known—Jack F. Klutz: In his youth the only "expectations" he had to satisfy were for behaving like any other normal little urchin—which he did so far as I was aware. And after he reached early adulthood, found a job and moved into his own bachelor apartment, like everyone else in Moronville I was completely fooled into believing he was "somewhat reclusive but in every other respect indistinguishable from all the other 9to5 Mainstreamers one saw coming and going on the streets of downtown Moronville."

248 Over a pair of blueblack slacks Hitler wore a tannishcolored doublebreasted blazer which, uniquely—as I discovered years later—was totally devoid of the usual Nazi military and party insignias; including the red, white & black hakenkreuz armband he designed in 1920 and rhapsodized over in Mein Kampf (along with the flag hung from his neoRoman standards and emblazoned with the words Deutschland Erwache!) as "a symbolic work of art that will live forever!" The only one of his predictions that will probably turn out to be true.

249 Remarks attributed to Goebbels and Bormann, among others, during April-May 1945 by Gerhardt Boldt in his Innen der Führerbunker mit Adolf Hitler.

250 Almost all the packages Hitler unwrapped that day contained objects d'art looted (or "bought for a song") from the private collections and museums that fell under Nazi control following the conquests of Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Denmark and Norway (not to mention the cultural booty extorted at bargain basement prices—or simply stolen—from Germany's affluent Jews). The most noteworthy of the spoils I saw being rendered unto their warlord by his henchmen were a pair of miniature Degas bronzes, Rousseau's Le Rêve, Courbet's The Origin of the World, Munch's Madonna, and Modigliani's (Hitler's sycophantic lackeys were either unaware or afraid to tell him that one of his favorite painters was in fact a Jew!) Nude on a Cushion.^250s1 

251 According to Nuremburg War Crimes Documents (138-PS, 141-PS, 1015-B-PS & 1233-PS), as of July 1944, 137 freight cars loaded with 4,174 cases of art works, containing 10,890 paintings and 11,000 other objects were sent from the occupied countries to Germany. They included works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Hals, Vermeer, Velasquez, Murillo, Goya, Vecchio, Watteau, Fragonard, Reynolds and Gainsborough. As early as January 1941 Rosenberg, who was in charge of the project, estimated the value of the art looted from France alone as 1 billion marks. In a secret order issued by Goering on 5 November 1940 detailing how the booty pilfered from the Louvre was to be divided he states:

Priority 1. Those art objects about which the Führer has reserved for himself the decision as to their use;
Priority 2. Those which serve the completion of my own collection, and;
Priority 3. The balance (if there is any) can be shared among Germany's public museums.

252 And one I personally prized, since both Mendelssohn and Shakespeare were at their best when they "collaborated" to produce what is, in my opinion, this most jewellike of all joint theatrical ventures.

253 To atone for this "sin," in 1946 I returned the manuscript to its rightful owner, the West German government. Who, I must say, weren't exactly overjoyed (they thought it had been incinerated with all of the other works by Germany's Jewish composers, authors, painters and scholars) at the prospect of having to deal with the "Mendelssohn problem" again—and all the "unpleasant memories it resurrected."

254 Hitler's coining of this word—Überstarstellung—has since been (rather indiscriminately) applied to even the most secondrate of showbusiness performers. In The Great American Hitler Play the Führer himself is portrayed as the charismatic leader of a Rock Band "that makes Led Zeppelin look and sound like the Vienna Boys' Choir."

255 This thesis was parodied brilliantly by Bertolt Brecht in the Marc Antony Funeral Oration scene of his Arturo Ui when the gangster Ui hires a Shakespearean hasbeen to give him elocution and acting lessons. A somewhat plagiarized (although its author acknowledges his theft) variation on Brecht's original theme can also be found in the aforementioned Great American Hitler Play.

256 Hitler was right. Nevertheless a careful reading of the New Testament does reveal some clues about how Christ went about creating his charismatic image, as the following examples indicate. Luke 12:1 "In the meantime, when there was gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, inso much that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples..." [The GRAND ENTRANCE technique ]. Luke 4:42 "And when it was day, he departed and went into a desert place: and the people sought him, and came unto him, and stayed him, that he should not depart from them." [The ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE technique.] Matthew 4:16 "The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." [The DRAMATIC LIGHTING technique.] Matthew 4:17 "From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." [The PROMISE THEM PIE IN THE SKY (or A VOLKSWAGEN IN EVERY GARAGE) technique.] Matthew 7:28, 29 "And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." [The FLATTERING YOUR AUDIENCE'S LACK OF LITERACY technique.] Luke 13:35 "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." [The DON'T BE AFRAID TO BLOW YOUR OWN TRUMPET technique.] Luke 18:15, 16 "And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." [The KISSING BABIES technique.] Luke 19:41, 42 " And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." [The EMOTIONAL APPEAL technique.] Matthew 13:10-13 "And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand." [The STORYTELLING (or KEEP IT SIMPLE) technique.] Matthew 14:15-21 "And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals. But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes. He said, Bring them hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children." [The FREE LUNCH technique.]

257 Following a mass meeting in Munich an American reporter wrote: "In the Circus Krone, Hitler spoke. He was an evangelist speaking to a camp meeting, the Billy Sunday of German politics. His converts moved with him, laughed with him, felt with him. They booed the French with him. They hissed the Weimar Republic with him...the [crowd of] 8,000 was an instrument on which Hitler played a symphony of national passion." H.  R. Knickerbocker, The German Crisis, p.227

258 Hitler was by no means alone in comparing himself to Christ. As an American visitor to Oberammergau told Dorothy Thompson in the early '30s: "Believe it or not, a German woman sat next to me at the Passion Play, and when they hoisted Jesus on the cross, she said, 'There he is. That is our Führer , our Hitler!' And when they paid out the thirty pieces of silver to Judas, she said: 'That is Röhm, who betrayed the Leader.'" America's ambassador to Germany described a similar incident in his diary. "When Jesus was tried before the angry Jewish court, a welldressed German, looking very solemn, said to me: 'Es ist unser Hitler' [He is our Hitler]."

259 For some examples taken from a newsreel of Hitler in action see Appendix J.

260 For more about Hitler's spellbinding oratory skills and its manifestly sexual nature see Joachim Fest's Hitler, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974; pp 338-46

261 As farfetched as this might seem; according to the Völkisher Beobachter: "During the performance of a skit entitled Redemption given at a Christmas party thrown by the Munich section of the NSDDAP when the curtains opened to show the rising star of Christmas Eve pointing to the Redeemer who will save the German people from shame and misery he was our Glorious Leader—Adolf Hitler!"

262 Not to mention the closing of Berlin's last Jewish delicatessen which, according to Goering was a "gastronomical disaster of the first magnitude!"

263 One of my favorites being: "Under the uniform of every Stormtrooper a Hitler Youth can be found."

264 In accordance with; it was always referred to by its military nomenclature—"Widerstandtasche (Resistance Pocket) XII."

265 Most noncollegians can (and do), of course, go through their entire lives in a similarly somnambulistic state. The trick—and one which, as you will discover later, Jack F. Klutz so successfully turned into his modus vivendi—is the ability to switch one's sleepwalking (or -sitting) on and off at will. And without anyone noticing the difference. Which, since they are probably also in a semicomatose state, isn't as difficult as it sounds.

266 Although, as you—and I—will soon see, underestimating Hitler's capacity for turning the tables on even the shrewdest of his adversaries can have lethal (at least for those whose fate literally depends on a favorable outcome of such Berchtesgaden summitry) consequences.

267 At first our facetoface dealings were carried on in Hitler's broken English and my fractured German. But we soon found ourselves conversing quite fluently in, of all things, Yiddish. Which Hitler had picked up during his student days in Vienna from some of his "closest friends" and I learned as what was then considered an indispensable part of my hyphenatedAmerican upbringing.

268 Lenin's momentous wartime train ride through Germany to St. Peterburg's Finland Station in 1917 also originated in Moronia; and was kept so secret most of the history books dealing with Russia's Communist Revolution are still silent on that not insignificant fact.

[If, ladies, you're wondering why I haven't put a stop to footnotes like this one on the grounds of their intolerable pedantry (I mean, does any housewife—except Mrs. Ulyanov, perhaps—really care all that much about how Lenin made his way to the Finland Station?) it is for these very good reasons: (a) While the relevancy of this entire "The Christmas I Spent With Adolf Hitler At Berchtesgaden" story to preaching the gospel of Born Again Klutzianity is in my opinion questionable, the author thinks otherwise and has issued several of his "THIS IS MY GODDAMN BOOK AND I'LL WRITE THE GODDAMN THING ANY GODDAMN WAY I WANT TO OR NOT AT ALL!" ultimatums on the point, and; (b) Faced with reason (a) and the fact his credibility is undergoing its severest test yet in attempting to persuade you he not only spent Christmas with Adolf Hitler but came close to ending WWII in December 1941, he should be given every opportunity—and the widest possible editorial latitude—to accomplish that crucial, and by no means easy, task.—J. P.]

269 I never dreamed such a seemingly "harmless deception" might—as it soon did—produce such catastrophic results! What I should have told Hitler was: "I hate to be a partypooper, Adolf, but my posting to Moronia is the result of a U. S. State Department conspiracy to prevent me from engaging in the kind of diplomatic escapade you have engineered! Consequently, while I could—and would—listen to whatever you have to say with the keenest interest, I have absolutely no authority to speak on behalf of my government."

270 In 1941 I was 22, which made Hitler my senior by exactly 30 years.

271 As we will shortly see—and to his credit—Hitler correctly predicted Mao tse-tung's ragtag People's Liberation Army would fill the Chinese power vacuum created when/if America put an end to Japan's bid for an Asian empire. I might also not the fact that this was the first time anyone (excluding my mother's wishful thinking) ever identified me as an—or the—agent through which divine providence would operate to reverse the decline of Western Civilization.

272 This "act of charity" by the Bavarian authorities toward Hitler in 1924 wasn't quite as "ironic" as it might seem. Not only was Hitler allowed to convert his treason trial into a soapbox for preaching party propaganda (his closing argument enthralled even those in the packed courtroom who weren't cardcarrying Nazis) the "spartan cell" where he spent his 6month sentence was actually a baronialsized room filled with creaturecomforts where he—and his unlimited visitors—enjoyed "an inspirational view" of the River Lech.

273 The fascists understood the power enormous crowds, vast spaces, gigantic architecture and spectacular sound & lighting effects had for dehumanizing individuals to a point where, not unlike that described by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World—or Kafka in his Metamorphosis —their wills can be completely subordinated to that of a piedpiper like Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler. The same sort of psychospiritual shrinkage can be observed among those who attend rock concerts, sporting events and that orchestrated mass hysteria every 4 years we Americans proudly hail as the Democratic and Republican political conventions.

274 Among them: Spengler's Decline of the West, Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses, Shakespeare's Complete Plays & Sonnets, Mann's Magic Mountain, Boccaccio's Decameron, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Celine's Death on the Instalment Plan and several volumes written by, of all things, such GermanJewish intellectuals as Heinrich Heine (Book of Songs), Hugo Hofmannsthal (Jedermann), Karl Marx (The German Ideology) and Sigmund Freud (The Psychopathology of Everyday Life).

275 One's suspicions are aroused by the way Hitler defines "reading" in Main Kampf (pp 35-36) as: "...no end in itself, but a means to an end... regardless of whether this consists of a primitive struggle for survival or the satisfaction of some higher calling...It is essential that the content of what one reads...should not be transmitted to the memory in the sequence of the book or books, but like the stone of a mosaic should fit into the general world picture...and thus help to form this picture in the mind of the reader. Otherwise there arises a confused muddle of memorized facts which not only are worthless, but also make their unfortunate possessor conceited. For such a reader now believes himself...to be 'educated'...while in reality, with every new acquisition of this kind of 'education' he is growing more and more removed from the world until, not infrequently, he ends up in an insane asylum—or parliament!"

276 Some of these paintings (by Beckmann, Chagall, Dix, Kirchner and Schmidt-Rottluff) had previously been displayed in the Nazi exhibition of Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) millions of Germans saw (and were supposed to ridicule) in the summer of 1937. At the same time another exhibition of officially approved art—much of it handpicked by the Führer—was opened in Munich so people could see the difference for themselves. In his opening speech Hitler promised, among other things, that "all those charlatans, dilettantes and art forgers whose Jew inspired garbage has been put on display for every German's enlightenment will be arrested and liquidated." Ironically, as Robert Hughes points out (Time Magazine, 4 March 1991): "Entartete Kunst was the first traveling blockbuster show of the 20th century. It went to several venues in Germany and Austria and was seen by the staggering total of nearly 3 million people, a larger box office than any art exhibition before or since. (By comparison, the Museum of Modern Art's Picasso retrospective drew 1.1 million 4 decades later.)"

277 Which turned out to be Nazi Germany's preWWII prototype for those HiFi/ Stereos that, like the VW, autobahn and Racketwissenschaft, would become a standard feature of America's postwar kultur.

278 Any connoisseur of what was once regarded as "the fine art of pipesmoking"—and an emblem of one's masculinity (and/or fatherfigure hood)—will recognize Alfred Dunhill of London & Charles Rattray of Perth as the Benvenuto Cellini & Baron Rothschild of their respective briar manufacturing and tobacco blending trades.

279 Once again the Nazis seem to have blazed a trail followed by our contemporary politicians who, if they still engage in such "filthy habits" (as Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton are rumored to have done now and then pipe- and cigarwise) do so well out of camera range.

280 In 1941 the attitudes I was beginning to form about "the evils of mindless mediocrity" could hardly be described as those of a crypto fascist, let alone a fullyfledged Nazi. Moreover, because the United States was locked in a life and death struggle with the forces of totalitarianism this wasn't the time for taking a hard look at the fundamental flaws in a One Man One Vote political system whose egalitarian poisons had yet to trickle their way down to the very bedrock of America's AngloSaxonGraecoRoman sociocultural heritage.

281 As it now has by establishing my credibility beyond all doubt with details of such verisimilitude no reasonable person can challenge them.

282 These monstrosities were more than twice the size of the one rising above Washington's Capitol Hill.

283 Hitler explained he was currently preoccupied with the "fascinating problem of how I would be represented in statuary terms as the man who consummated Germany's Manifest Destiny to become a global superpower without appearing to diminish the contributions made by my illustrious predecessors." A dilemma almost identical to that faced 50 years later by Kurt Waldheim—and brilliantly satirized in the play Refreshing The Memory of an Austrian—when, on the eve of his retirement as U. N. Secretary General, he "agonizes" over how to make his statue seem "slightly more distinguished" than those of his equally distinguished predecessors, Trygve Lie, Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant.

284 As a matter of fact Hitler's windowless—and, for respiratory purposes, Uboatlike—study was (if not filled) already redolent with the pipe smoking he had done in it from the day Speer presented him the key to his "Führerarbeitzimmer." And the smell of old tobacco smoke was only one of the odors pervading the atmosphere of this hermitage with its solitary occupant's unique "bouquet." Over time Hitler's sweat (and other glandular secretions) had permeated every nook, cranny, crevice and pore of his lair with that distinctive scent cocktail by which animals mark their territory; and, before the extensive use of soap, added an aromatic dimension^284s1 to human relationships lacking in today's supersanitized state of social affairs. 

285 I almost made the mistake of adding "Thank God!" because, while my sleepdeprived mental faculties were crying out for a nicotine fix, the dilemma of having to obtain it through a mouthpiece on which Hitler had left his teeth marks and an alltoo visible film of salivary residue, was one I mercifully didn't have to wrestle with.

286 If my concerns over keeping Hitler in the dark about our identical preferences tobaccowise seem extravagantly obsessive to you, dear reader, believe me they were motivated by more than just vanity. For diplomatic reasons it was imperative to make Hitler believe there were some things about me (ie., my weakness for Hal O'the Wynde) not revealed in the dossier compiled by Himmler's agents in Moronville and Washington. My predicament was not unlike that faced by a woman who struggles to retain at least a shred of her feminine mystique (and/or human dignity) before the smoothtalking makeout—or "foreplay"—artist who's been mentally undressing her begins haggling over the terms by which he can actually strip her in the privacy of an apartment, a hotel room or the "boudoir" of his mobile home.

287 Few—if any—artifacts paint a more accurate portrait of a man's soul than that revealed by the mouthpiece of his favorite pipe. A handkerchief, comb, a a toothbrush, a wife and even a mistress or 2 have, in extreme situations, been lent, shared and/or exchanged among comrades. But history has yet to record any credible evidence of pipeswapping between even the closest of friends.

288 Hitler puffed furiously away on his pipe with the clenched teeth of a rank amateur who was wholly oblivious to the rule that: One must keep the temperature of one's smoke just barely above the level needed for sustaining combustion not only to derive the maximum aromatic pleasure; but to avoid the painful condition known among pipe smokers as "tonguebite." I, on the other hand, did my puffing in such an exemplary manner that, when a wisp of fully exhausted (French inhalingwise) fumes did escape from my nostrils, it was so vaporous as to be all but invisible.

289 Including such Aryan Hemen as his Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin Neurath, Finance Minister Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Army CommanderIn Chief Freiherr von Fritsch and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder; not to mention Field Marshals Werner von Blomberg, Walther von Brauchitsch, Gerd von Runstedt, Fedor von Bock and even that supranational icon of Teutonic Knighthood—Erwin Rommel!

290 Neville Chamberlain, Turning The Other Cheek: A Defense Of Britain's Appeasement Policy Toward Nazi Germany, p.177.

291 And a stubborn heel of unburnt tobacco. If I dote on these minute details of Hitler's smoking habits it is only to illustrate (in keeping with my Theory of Microcosmicity) how all the atrocities he committed against humanity could have been predicted from the torture he inflicted on his pipes.

292 See Appendix I for a replica of Hitler's New World Order map.

Subfootnotes

250s1 The author might have added that these works of art are also among his personal favorites.—J. P.  Return to text

284s1 Hence the olfactory homage paid by Shakespeare:

Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me,
And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,
And nothing but the very smell were left me,
Yet would my love to thee be still as much;
For from the stillitory of thy face excelling
Comes breath perfumed, that breedeth love by smelling

—Venus & Adonis

and King Solomon on the same subject:

How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices! Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices: A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.

—Song of Solomon 4:10-15)

along with the grandson of Christ's shameless claim in The Apocrypha; Sirach 24:14,15 that:

I was exalted like a palm tree in En-gaddi, and as a rose plant in Jericho, as a fair olive tree in a pleasant field, and grew up as a plane tree by the water. I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon and aspalathus, and I yielded a pleasant odour like the best myrrh, as galbanum, and onyx, and sweet storax, and as the fume of frankincense in the tabernacle.

would now be considered the grossest kind of poetical incorrectness.

     My reaction to inhaling Hitler's spoor with every breath I took was as mixed as it would have been vis-a-vis that emanating from any other man since the Quintessential Evil he would come to personify had yet to be established beyond any reasonable doubt when the "overkill" of his rhetorical style was actually translated into those diabolical deeds now known as The Holocaust. Oppositesexwise another 50 years would pass before I found myself faced by a similar set of odorous circumstances when entering the "Salt Mine" where Jayne Playne slaved the best years of her life away reading unsolicited manuscripts in the steamy bowels of a Manhattan skyscraper before rising to the airconditioned offices she now occupies in its penthouse as EditoressInChief. But that's another story.

[EDITORESS' NOTE: Given the sweatshop conditions I was forced to work in while searching for Mr. Right (Great Unpublished American Novelistwise) there is no need to excuse the "personal hygiene sins" I may have committed against the author and/or all those other busybodies who poked their noses into my private little Hell Hole. Nevertheless I must take the strongest possible exception to being mentioned in the same context (no matter how "benign" or even complimentary "oppositesexwise" the author claims his intent was) with Adolf Hitler!!!—J. P.]

Glossary
lumpenproletariat noun 1.) The lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat. Used originally in Marxist theory to describe those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness. 2.) The underclass of a human population. [German : Lumpen, pl. of Lump, ragamuffin (from Middle High German lumpe, rag) + Proletariat, proletariat (from French proletariat).